


I Strive

by indysaur



Category: Inception (2010)
Genre: F/M, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-04-15
Updated: 2012-04-14
Packaged: 2017-11-03 16:24:29
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 25,348
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/383493
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/indysaur/pseuds/indysaur
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Love means something different to Dom, to Mal, to Arthur.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Arthur quotes an uber-random portion of The Brothers Karamazov. Pretension! Let me show you it.

> _The dream of artists—which is simply the dream of friends and lovers, magnified—is to plant themselves in other people's heads._
> 
> __Tad Friend

  
  
Dom’s waiting in the hallway, when she comes out of Professor Miles’ office. They look up at the same time, and he's startled to find that they’re both operating to the same rhythm, so much so that he says, "Hi." Automatic, as if she'd pressed a button.  
  
"Hello," she says, smiling politely.  
  
"Is the professor in?" he asks. He realizes he's slouching, still, against the wall and scrambles to his feet, to his full height.  
  
Her smile warms. "Yes. The professor is in."  
  
"Oh. Good."  
  
She nods, amusement on her face. She’s waiting, he knows, but he can't find another thought to verbalize. "Okay, then," she says, and turns to go.  
  
"Wait," Dom says. He aborts an attempt to touch her arm. "What's your name?"  
  
She turns halfway, stopped in the middle of the hall, looking at him from the corner of her eye. Assessing. "What's yours?" she asks.  
  
"Dom," he says. "Dominic."  
  
"Mallorie," she replies, then, glancing down at a watch, "I'm so sorry. I'm late for a class."  
  
He watches her take a step, then another away from him, and he can't stop himself from calling, "Mallorie!"  
  
She turns around, again, the beginning of exasperation in her shoulders. She raises an eyebrow.  
  
"You have an accent." He finds he's been swinging his arms, back and forth. He puts his hands in his pockets.  
  
She laughs. "Oh, _no_ ," she says.  
  
****  
  
He's decided on one of two places to take her on their first date. He can't take the leap beyond that, to make a choice between the two.  
  
The professor had asked Dom to call him Miles and Dom can't figure out if it's because he knows that Dom is neck-deep in lust bordering on—something, something else—for his daughter, or if it's because Dom has agreed to teach one of his sections next semester.  
  
He toys with asking the professor— _Miles_ —if Mallorie is the kind of girl who expects candlelight and linen tablecloths. If she'd think being taken to eat ribs on a first date screams of over-posturing.  
  
He knocks on her door instead, hours and hours before they're scheduled to meet. When she opens the door, he says, "I don't mean to be early. This isn't the start of our date."  
  
She nods, taken aback. "Okay."  
  
He sighs. It occurs to him that he might have been heavy-handed with his cologne this morning. "I wanted your input for dinner." He drags a hand across his brow. This might have been a bad idea. "I've narrowed it down to a couple of choices."  
  
She opens the door fully. Framed in dark jeans and a v-neck. "Which restaurant wouldn't require a change in clothing?" she asks, with what might be affection in her voice, and Dom smiles, feels a knot in the back of his neck loosen.  
  
****  
  
He takes her hand after dinner, in front of her building. Night air heavy with heat, sweat beading at his nape. Her face lit by the cold fluorescent light illuminating the steps.  
  
"You're beautiful, beautiful," he tells her.  
  
She's standing a step above him. She traces his hair line. "Gorgeous." She cups his cheek. "Ravishing." She touches his bottom lip. "A face to break a woman's heart," she tells him, dancing eyes belying her grave tone.  
  
It’s late. _I don’t know you at all_ , he thinks. He is upon a precipice.  
  
He wonders what it would be like to kiss her.  
  
****  
  
They're engaged, quick. "Lock that down," his roommate told him, and he did.  
  
His parents throw a party in his hometown, at the community hall he knows from countless high school sports team dinners, debates. Elizabeth is there. Dom had prayed against her, when they'd sent out invitations, but her parents were old family friends, so there was no getting around it.  
  
She keeps her distance, but after dinner, and drinks, she comes around and hugs Dom, takes Mal's hand. "So this is you," she says to Mal.  
  
Mal nods. "It's nice to meet you."  
  
Elizabeth narrows her eyes. Her smile is brittle. "You should really know who I am," she says, then walks away.  
  
 _Fucked_ , Dom thinks when Mal turns to look at him, cool and calculating.  
  
****  
  
He tells her as they're getting ready for bed. The reasons Elizabeth has to be angry. The very short overlap between relationships. When he's finished, Mal is sitting on the bed, cross-legged, wiping the polish from her nails in short, savage strokes. "Damn it, Dominic. I'm embarrassed for you."  
  
"I didn't do anything wrong," Dom says, stung. "Not really."  
  
"Then why look so guilty?" she asks, throwing a hand in the air in his direction. "Why, if you believe that?"  
  
She's waiting but he has nothing to say. She looks him straight in the eye but he breaks her gaze, looks to where the wallpaper is peeling in his parents' guest bedroom.  
  
"Shit," she says.  
  
The silence drags on. Dom steps into the adjoining bathroom to brush his teeth, spitting, rinsing. When he comes back into the bedroom, Mal is in bed, the covers pushed down to her ankles, sheets twisted around her form. "So," he asks, casually, like he doesn't care one way or the other. "What? Should I call the couch into service? Has its number come up already?"  
  
She pushes up onto one elbow. "No. Get into bed."  
  
He obeys. He feels unsure of what he's allowed, but after he turns off the lamp at the bedside, he dares to touch her wrist.  
  
"I'm still so angry at you," she says, a voice in the dark.  
  
"I know. I'm sorry. I should have told you before."  
  
The sound of her breath. "This is not who I wanted to be," she says, finally. She curls around him. "It's not who I thought you were," her mouth against his shoulder.  
  
****  
  
They have a wedding under a tent. Every time they kiss, the sound of ringing glass.  
  
"Mallorie Cobb," she whispers in his ear between toasts. "It sounds so _American_."  
  
During the maid-of-honor’s speech, Mal buries her face in his neck, hiding the blush that creeps along her cheeks at some story from her misspent teenage years, and he thinks, _I was a man who didn’t know love, once_.  
  
****  
  
During that first year, he'd wake up some mornings with her beside him, her back to him. He'd press up against her, impatient for her to open her eyes.  
  
She'd turn her head, and he'd kiss her cheek. "Good morning," she'd say.  
  
"Good morning," he'd reply, and then slide a thigh between her legs, a hand low on her belly. "And what should we do today?" he'd ask. All his hope replaced by certainty.  
  
****  
  
Mal speaks four languages, one of which is Arabic. She’s intelligent to a near-intimidating degree, and perhaps the most capable person he knows. He tells her she should consider the offer, that it isn’t a total surprise. That dismissing a job out of hand for its ties to the Department of Defense is short-sighted. “The funding alone—you could do great things. Imagine the stories you’d have to tell,” he says.  
  
“But I wouldn’t be able to tell those stories,” Mal says. “I don’t like it. Everything so shadowy.”  
  
“The cloak and dagger is the majority of the appeal,” Dom says.  
  
“How revealing,” Mal says dryly.  
  
****  
  
She recruits him after their second fight over her distance. “This is not worth sacrificing our marriage over,” she tells him.  
  
“You could quit,” he points out.  
  
“And do what? Have a four-course dinner waiting for you on the table when you get home?” She rolls her eyes. “Besides, I think you’d be perfect for this phase of our project. Something new.” She emphasizes the last word, drawing out all the specific allure it holds for him.  
  
“Do you need someone extremely competent? A structural genius? An architect to rival all other architects, dead and living?” Dom pulls off his socks, cursorily examines a hole in the heel of his left one.  
  
“Yes, and debonair, too.”  
  
“Well,” Dom says, putting his hands on his thighs. “I’d say you’ve found your man.”  
  
Mal leans back against their bedroom wall, her hands crossed behind her. “So humble a heart,” she says.  
  
He blows out a long exhale, holds her gaze. “We’ll be together. Will I be working in one wing and you in another, two floors away?”  
  
“No,” she says.  
  
“Then yes,” he says.  
  
****  
  
She shows him the PASIV device on his fourth day, after orientation. The security surrounding the project is—to be generous—frustrating. It takes him fifteen minutes to get from the door leading into the building to his office. “No wonder the covert operations in this country fail to achieve their best. Efficiency is being sacrificed at the altar to the false idol that is confidentiality.”  
  
“Another well-considered Cobb opinion,” Mal says, opening what looks like a briefcase.  
  
“Good as gold,” Dom says.  
  
Mal holds up a Trocar needle. She has a look in her eye, a secret she’s eager to tell lighting her up. “Do you trust me?” she asks.  
  
“Yes,” he says. “More than the ground I’m standing on.”  
  
Her gaze goes soft. She kisses his temple, hands searching for a vein, murmurs, “Now. You’ll feel a small pinch.”  
  
****  
  
He wakes up in a campsite. It’s night, and through a hole in the crowd of trees above, the stars are slowly fading in and out. Clouds pulling apart around them. Like the shadow of a colossus who tears at cumulus is falling, shifting across the sky.  
  
“It’s quiet,” he says.  
  
Mal’s arms wrap around him from behind. They’re sitting on a fallen tree, and with every shift he makes, he can feel the bark dropping away from the bone-trunk underneath. “No,” she says into his ear. “Listen.”  
  
And she’s right. Crickets. Twigs snapping under the feet of an animal that calls this forest home.  
  
“Build me something,” she says. She points to a clearing in the near distance. “There.”  
  
“How?” he asks.  
  
“You know how.”  
  
“I couldn’t. We’d need to survey the land. Assess the environmental impact. I’d need a project manager I can rely on and a contractor—”  
  
She laughs. “Close your eyes,” she says, then puts her hand over his lowered eyelids. She wraps one leg around his waist. “You’ve called the contractor. You’ve filed plans with the appropriate regulatory bodies. You watch them level the earth, the foundation setting.” She hums. “Do you see it? Tell me when it’s ready to build upon.”  
  
He lays his head back on her shoulder. “It’s ready,” he says.  
  
“Intuit the structure. Every intention fulfilled. See the foundation laid.” She takes his hand and holds it up in front of him. “Feel the beams rising.”  
  
He can feel the place where his heart would be beating, the pounding pace of it.  
  
“Can you do it more quickly?” she asks.  
  
A stream of lumber. Paint flooding up walls. Dust filling the air with an uncountable number of motes, suspended in the sun. Through his wife’s hand, through the pluckable-thin skin of his eyelids, blackness turning to a hazy, glowing red. “It’s there, isn’t it?” he asks.  
  
He can feel her smile against his neck. “It looks like a house a wolf would try to blow down.”  
  
“I’m sweating,” he says.  
  
“You’ve made it very hot,” she agrees. “Would you like to see?” She pulls her hand away, and the instant he opens his eyes, he has to close them again, pupils shocked into dilating by the brilliance of vision. When he opens them again, he sees a house you could pull on like a sleeve, there on a flat-topped hill. Matchsticks held together by twine, so tall it could block out the sun, a breeze sending sheer curtains fanning out like banners.  
  
“I'll huff and I’ll puff,” Mal says.  
  
****  
  
It’s exhilarating. He coaxes spires out of the ground. He moves mountains. He carves cliffs, then houses into those cliffs, every filigree and molding in layered sandstone.  
  
Mal knits landscapes together, bare-branched trees adopting faces, a different profile from every new angle.  
  
Their projections tolerate each other's presence. Dangerous, still, when provoked—Dom has looked for bruises upon waking that are never actually there—but manageable.  
  
"The same isn't true for other minds," Mal warns him.  
  
"No?"  
  
"You seem to tolerate invasion."  
  
"Hm," he says. He pulls at her hair, gently. "You occupy my thoughts."  
  
****  
  
Miles comes to America; a move he'd justified with a stint guest-lecturing at Georgetown. In the car on the way home from the airport, he says, "It's unfathomable to me that you have yet to enter a dream without Mallorie. You are developing an altogether skewed vision of what construction within a foreign mind is truly like."  
  
"Dad," Mallorie says, twisting in her seat.  
  
"You're hobbling him," Miles insists.  
  
"So good to see you," Dom says.  
  
****  
  
Men in uniform seem to multiply in the halls, rapidly. "Jesus Christ," Dom says. "One day you have two, and the next sixteen."  
  
"The problem was allowing in a mating pair," Mal says, lowering the back of a sleeping chair.  
  
The soldier in the chair grips the armrests, settles back into the deep cushioning. "What is this, ergonomic?" He looks up at the ceiling, no sign of a reaction when Mal slides the needle into his arm. "Who paid for this?"  
  
Mal tears a piece of tape off with her teeth, delicately secures the soldier's line. "The army," she says, concentrating.  
  
"Ah," the soldier says. "The army."  
  
"Incredible, the point on that comment," Dom says, closing his eyes. "And with such little inflection."  
  
"Men," Mal says. Then: "Good night, Arthur." And: "Remember, peace and calm. You're walking into an empty plaza. Buildings unpeopled. The sun is setting. You are untroubled and not alone..."  
  
Arthur's eyes close.  
  
"Little dreamer," Mal says. The last thing Dom hears before he sleeps.  
  
****  
  
They're in an empty square, the architecture speaking a common, yet unspecified language. Shadows are pooling at the bases of buildings, waiting out a fiery, blowing-out sun.  
  
Arthur has his back to Dom and is dressed all in black, not an identifying mark on his clothing. Lean, and corded. Dom imagines a rope, wet, fibers contracted, hemp ready to sting—and without prompting, it coils into physicality, braiding around the perimeter of the plaza. It sinks into the cobblestones.  
  
Arthur turns sharply, searching for the hand behind the act of creation, and Dom sees a glint in the clock tower above, a rifle rising, a split second warning before a bullet slams into his shoulder. He falls back onto his ass, his hand flying up to pat at the blood, the tearing pain. "You've got to be fucking kidding me," he roars.  
  
The sound of soles against pavement echoes, and Arthur sprints toward Dom, arms knifing through the air. He barely slows to loop an arm under Dom's good shoulder, dragging him to his feet and getting him to move.  
  
Dom shoves him away. "You fucking _shot me_."  
  
"Come on." Arthur slips under Dom’s arm again, taking some of his weight. "We need to get through that gate."  
  
"This hurts, you son of a bitch," Dom says, jogging. He winces in pain at the impact of each footfall, his vision hazy at the edges.  
  
"To be fair," Arthur says coolly, "you did play with my toys without permission."  
  
"You're a fucking psychopath."  
  
"I don't do things by halves, no," Arthur says.  
  
****  
  
In Arthur's dreams he is an efficient machine. Gears humming everywhere, just under the surface. His projections run on a schedule. Mal built a train for him and it's a favorite setting: ten cars, each with their designated purpose, doors and compartments. Always headed toward a destination.  
  
Dom and Mal are walking down a hallway together. Mal seems to enjoy Arthur. She presses her hand to each door they pass by. "In compartment two, your parents. In three, your brother. In four, a child. Not yours, I don't think, but sweet, all the same. In five, a girl." A rundown of the reconnaissance she has done.  
  
Arthur keeps forging ahead in front of them.  
  
"She's very lovely," Mal whispers to Dom, taking his arm.  
  
"Your prying is not appreciated," Arthur says, pushing his way into the dining car.  
  
"And yet you never get shot," Dom whispers to Mal.  
  
She turns to the first booth on the right as they step into the dining car. “Bonjour, Monsieur Costello," she says, deliberately provocative, but the projection only stares after her, grips the edge of the table until its knuckles are white. "Very good, Arthur," she calls.  
  
He grunts.  
  
****  
  
The work is fitted with seven league boots, leaping ahead with every day. They have new recruits, all the time.  
  
"It's exciting, isn't it?" Mal asks. She turns in bed, onto her stomach, looking down at Dom. "This woman they've brought in, she's fascinating. She's someone completely different in her dreams. Androgynous, or—or...I don’t know. That’s not quite the right word. Not herself.”  
  
"Don't bite your nails," Dom chides.  
  
She makes a noise of protest. "Did you hear what I just said?"  
  
"Yes," Dom says. He takes her hand and kisses the back of it. "Maybe we're more of ourselves in our dreams. There's no real reason to expect the reflection in your mind's eye to match the one in the mirror."  
  
"I didn't—" Mal chews at her lip, staring at nothing as she thinks. "God!" She drops her head into his shoulder, voice muffled by the pillow. "How could I have dismissed so many thoughts as mere curiosities?”  
  
"No harm's been done," Dom says.  
  
"What happens if you die, do you think?" Mal asks. "In the dream."  
  
"Let's not find out," Dom says.  
  
She groans, rolling onto her back, away from him, but he follows her, lays his head on her chest. He curves his hand around her hip. "Do you think you're different, in your dreams? Do you feel the same as you do awake?"  
  
She's quiet for a while, thinking. Her hand in his hair. "I feel unleashed," she says finally. "And you?"  
  
"Heady with power and control."  
  
She snorts. "You only think you're joking."  
  
He smiles against her breast. "What will they do with the woman?" he asks.  
  
"I'm not sure, yet," Mal says. "I don't think we know which question to ask first."  
  
Dom flicks through a half-dozen, until he settles on one. "How mutable is she?" He breathes in the smell of her: his wife, whom he would know if blind, if deaf, if dumb.  
  
****  
  
He meets the woman, Kit, on a Sunday. He wakes up in a forest she's dreamed up. Thick and overgrown; it’s strictly by instinct that he knows that the sun is high up in the air, shining bright, only the petals of its light sifting down to the floor where he is. Trees so tall he can't see where their branches begin.  
  
Kit comes striding, slipping between trunks, around shrub and bush.  
  
"Hail, Brynhildr," Dom says. He can't help it, a greeting that occurred in his mind too strong to keep from saying.  
  
She stops, looking at him. "You must be Dominic," she says.  
  
"I'm sorry," Dom says. "I don't know why I said that."  
  
She shrugs. "You've been spending a lot of time in Arthur's head. He calls me that."  
  
"Why?"  
  
She laughs. She's standing in jeans and a t-shirt that she holds gathered up in one hand, turning it into a makeshift pouch. The smooth, tanned skin of her thickened waist. "I made the mistake of telling him the nickname my high school volleyball team gave me. He promised to tell me his, but here we are, 18 months out of Kandahar, and I still only know to call him Arthur." She sits, and lets down her shirt a little, revealing fruit. She flips him a strawberry.  
  
Dom sits across from her.  
  
"So do you know what exactly we're doing today?” Kit asks. “I just heard tests."  
  
"That's what I hear."  
  
"Like what, though?" She takes a piece of her hair, and he watches the dark brown shift toward black, so subtle it could be a play of light.  
  
She's nervous, he realizes. "I'm not sure," he says honestly. "Nothing major, I'd bet." He holds on to the strawberry.  
  
"Your wife," Kit says. "I can probably trust her, right?"  
  
"Yes," Dom says.  
  
"She's got a little bit of badass in her, you know? She’s got intent behind that face."  
  
Dom laughs. “Not an inaccurate reading." He looks around. He digs his hands into the rotting leaves blanketing the ground underneath him. The wet mulch. "This is an interesting construction. The details are strong."  
  
"I used to daydream about a forest like this," Kit says. "One that’s all old-growth. Trees thousands of years old that knew what California looked like before it was strip malls and Spanish-style homes." She laughs. "I was probably a weird kid."  
  
"Why forests? What would you imagine doing here?"  
  
She looks up, and up. High enough to get lost. She says, “Climb.”  
  
****  
  
Dom slips away to peek in on Mal's debriefing with Kit. Kit is striking in person, too, her shoulders held confidently. The shape if not the details recognizable. "I appreciate your desire to understand, ma'am," Kit says. "But it would serve us both best if we had this conversation sleeping. I could be more helpful to you."  
  
Mal mirrors Kit's posture, her pen tap-tapping. She jots a quick note, then uncrosses her legs, leans forward. "Can I be honest with you?" At Kit's raised eyebrow, Mal sits back in her chair, wipes the air in front of her clean with both hands. "Truly honest."  
  
"Fine. Yes, I’d appreciate that."  
  
"I'm worried," Mal says. "I mean to say...I'm thankful that you've given so much of your time to us. You've been accommodating in every way a person in your situation could be." She puts her hands, palms up, on the table. "But we've already asked you to spend so much of your time in the dreams. We've had you sleep for days. The technology is still so new."  
  
"What is it that you're afraid of, ma'am?" Kit asks.  
  
Mal clasps her hands together. "I'm worried that you won't want to wake up. I understand that. I want to ask, sometimes, for a few minutes more."  
  
Kit looks down. When she looks up again, Dom can't quite see her eyes, but Mal straightens suddenly, struck. "Would it be so wrong?" Kit asks. "I'm who I want to be when I dream. And every time I wake up, to look down and see—these hands again." Her voice shudders under the weight of her words. "These arms and legs. Is it so wrong, not to want to wake up?"  
  
Mal takes her hands. She grips them tight. "No," she says, firmly, her eyes earnest. " _No_ , of course not. Of course."  
  
Kit bows her head, shakes it back and forth. "Can I have just one minute, ma'am?" she asks.  
  
Mal stands. She puts a hand on Kit's shoulder as she passes.  
  
"I'm sorry," Kit says. She shakes her head, pulls away from Mal’s hand. "God, I'm fine, really." She chokes on a laugh. "I'm not usually like this."  
  
"I'll be right outside," Mal says, then crosses, quietly, to the door. She closes it behind her, watching the latch click, and when she looks up to find Dom, waiting, she makes this broken noise.  
  
"Hi," he says.  
  
"I'm crying." She laughs, wet. "I don't know why." She steps close and touches the lapels of his shirt, straightens his collar.  
  
He wipes the tears from her face, the one clinging to her jaw.  
  
She drops her forehead to his chest. "But won't she be lonely?" she asks.  
  
****  
  
Dom sees Kit more now than he did when she was counted among the awake.  
  
He's waiting for Mal to finish up so they can go home when he walks past Kit's room. A body nourished to keep alive her mind. Arthur is sleeping next to her, and Dom thinks, 'What the hell,' rolls up his sleeve.  
  
He wakes up in a city of neon lights, buildings sizzling with color: Shinjuku and Times Square and Blade Runner scissored together. He'll need to get lucky, to find Kit and Arthur. He turns in place, once, then again, and sees them standing at a food cart.  
  
Arthur stabs the air with his hand, anger on his face, and as Dom muscles through a crowd of Kit's projections, he hears him say, "It's self-aggrandizing, major."  
  
"Arthur, did you come here just to yell at me? That’s fine, but I’d like to know if I’m riding this out in hopes for an eventual shared drink, or if I should really buckle in," Kit says. She accepts a bowl of noodles, wields chopsticks. She's tall here, taller than Arthur and she takes advantage of it, looks down upon him.  
  
Arthur holds her gaze, no sign of intimidation. "You're static. You used to call that the kiss of death. We learn, we educate ourselves, we adapt or die."  
  
"I'm not adapting?" Kit says. "Do I need to show you more of my tricks?" Her features blurring, variations on her face, one after the other as she whistles a circus theme.  
  
Arthur is not amused. "It's a closed feedback loop, Kit. Who's going to challenge you?" He grabs a projection walking by, a man in black tie. "Him?" He shoves him away to point at a Harajuku girl walking past. "Her? You'll be raving to yourself. There's no one but you here."  
  
"And you," Kit points out, obstinate.  
  
The projections shove against Dom harder. He's having a hard time getting closer than this, just outside the circle of their argument. "Kit!" he calls, and the projections near him turn to look at him as one.  
  
Arthur grabs Kit, up high on her arms. He shakes her. "This isn't real. This role you're acting out here is not who you really are."  
  
"Arthur, stop," Kit says, her projections turning toward him.  
  
"Don't _kid_ yourself—"  
  
"Stop!" she shouts, and a mob swarms Arthur, tearing at his clothes, at his limbs, so sudden he can't get another word out, going down in a whirl of fists and knees.  
  
 _Wake up_ , Dom thinks. He sees not a scrap of Arthur. _Wake up, wake up, wake up_ , panic in his belly, shuttering the sky into day, the square of street beneath him erupting high. He has wandered into a hostile land.  
  
"Dom."  
  
When he looks down, he can see Kit there at the base, a speck. Her clothes, too, torn.  
  
"Dom. Don't tell me I killed him," she says, her voice far away. "Please don't tell me that." The city plunged into a mourning black.  
  
****  
  
Dom wakes up with a jerk, sees Arthur standing in front of him with tubing hanging in his hand, the cannula that had recently occupied one of Dom's veins dripping onto the floor. Dom hisses at the sting in his arm. "There's got to be a better way to wake someone up than that," he says. "You're alive," he says.  
  
"Ta-da." Arthur's smile is grim.  
  
"She'll want to know." Dom looks at Kit's sleeping face. "Arthur, you know how impossible it is to control your projections, even with other minds at their most unobtrusive."  
  
"I was particularly un-unobtrusive," Arthur allows. He hasn't let go of the tubing, a puddle forming underneath the needle. He's digging his nails into his palms, Dom notes.  
  
"Arthur," Dom says, careful. "Maybe you should sit down."  
  
Arthur nods. "Maybe."  
  
"At ease, soldier," Dom says, adopting a more familiar language under the guise of jest.  
  
Arthur hisses out a breath. He laughs, angry. He lifts an arm, points at his wrist. "I could feel the bones here, grinding. Twisting just the wrong way. All I could think was that this was my shooting hand. That was my trigger finger, splintering."  
  
"Let's speak with whatever professional you're supposed to speak to." Dom stands, puts a hand on the span of Arthur's shoulders. "I know there's some overpaid asshole on staff. Come on. Mal, too. We can talk to her."  
  
Arthur wets his lips. His throat bobbing. "Yeah. Mal will want to know," he says, and Dom can see him force himself into action, into movement. The careful detaching of needle from tube. "Now we know what happens when we die during a dream." He disposes of the cannula in the biohazard waste bin, winds the tubing around his fingers in efficient circles.  
  
"Utilitarian as always," Dom says.  
  
Arthur glances at Kit in repose.  
  
"She had no intention," Dom says, gentle.  
  
Arthur pretends not to hear. "Maybe I was wrong," he says. "The pain felt real enough. More than real."  
  
"Hey," Dom says. He squeezes Arthur's shoulder. "You're fine. You're okay."  
  
"Sure," Arthur says easily. He smiles with serrated teeth. "But when I first woke up, you could have fooled me. Easy to think otherwise." He wiggles his fingers in front of his face. "Look, ma," he says.  
  
****  
  
Mal starts to spend more time with Kit, down there. "There's an opportunity to learn," she says. "What it feels like to sleep for so long."  
  
"A silver lining," Dom says.  
  
"Something like that," Mal says, and she looks—far away, for a moment.  
  
****  
  
"She doesn't believe me, not completely in any case," Mal says. She's hissing, a tone of voice that makes Dom note the placement of every exit. He stops, half through the door, cranes forward a bit to see the unfortunate target of Mal's anger.  
  
Arthur is standing stock-still, chin lifted. Mal is finishing the knot in his tie and makes a gesture as if to pull it over-tight, when Arthur captures her gaze, raises an eyebrow.  
  
She throws her hands up. "You do it, then! You're right to think I might choke you."  
  
Arthur rolls his eyes. "Mal, would you give me a break?"  
  
"Just dip under, that's all I'm asking you to do," she says. "Show her your handsome and unbearable face."  
  
"If she wants to know I'm alive," Arthur says, "she can wake up and see for herself."  
  
"She's made her choice. The best one she could make," Mal says. Her arms crossed. "I don't want to fight about this with you."  
  
"So we won't fight."  
  
Mal scoffs, but a smile plays around her mouth. "I hate when you retreat so fully into this persona," she says, gesturing at his suit. The clothes a new affectation Dom has openly wondered about.  
  
Arthur tugs down on the tie knot, pulls his mouth as he tries to get a good look at it. "Ugh," he says.  
  
"Problem?" Mal asks.  
  
"No, nothing." Arthur tightens the knot, squares it away at his collar. "Windsor knots are for dicks," he amends.  
  
"How fortuitous, then, to have accidentally tied a knot appropriate to the man."  
  
"I let you have that one," Arthur says. He reaches for Mal's arm, squeezes it. "You say she's made her choice. So let her deal with the consequences."  
  
"I would never have thought you petulant—"  
  
"She chose to live in a world where nobody else exists, Mal. Not you, not me," Arthur says, raising his voice, at his very limits.  
  
"Arthur—"  
  
"Don't push me," he says.  
  
"Why not?" Mal, full of flame.  
  
****  
  
They have the argument frequently. To the point where one or the other will pick it up at any opportune moment, a disagreement carried around in back pockets.  
  
Cobb's dream. A cemetery, rows and rows of crumbling headstones—here lies Cobb-at-16, Cobb-at-17 and so on, just short of Cobb-at-31, currently strolling—among grass a well-fed green. One minute Mal is studying epitaphs, the next she says, "It makes me feel as if you would tear me out, too, if I made such a mistake."  
  
Arthur strides with back bent, hands held behind his back. "You wouldn't make that kind of mistake."  
  
"I make mistakes all the time," Mal laughs. "I do a new thing wrong every hour."  
  
"I'll vouch for that," Dom says, and Mal looks up at him, narrows her eyes, digs fingers into his side.  
  
"I wouldn't tear you out," Arthur says quietly. “Anybody else, maybe. But not you.”  
  
Mal sighs, leans her head against Dom's shoulder, a hand worrying at her lips. "Oh," she says, soft, and watches Arthur pick up his pace, put distance between them.  
  
Dom presses a kiss into her curls. "If I should bow out gracefully now," he whispers, "would I be rewarded with the privilege of giving you away at your wedding to Arthur?"  
  
"I couldn't guarantee," she says, immediately. She pulls his face to hers, kisses him ardently. When she pulls away, she pinches, hard, at his waist. “I don’t like this place,” she tells him. “I want to dig up all your graves.”  
  
****  
  
Dom goes in with Mal to see Kit after that. As often as she asks Arthur, Dom goes.  
  
The first time, they find themselves walking up a stairwell, and when Mal pushes open the door, they walk out onto a tall building's roof. It's a bordered square, three large steps in any direction, and a fourth to send you soaring. The wind grabs at his hair and his clothes, in a hurry to strip him to his skin.  
  
"Kit," Mal calls, and the figure leaning against the edge's railing turns, Arthur's borrowed lips saying, "Hi, Dom."  
  
Dom stops. He slides his hands into his pockets. "Kit," he says.  
  
"Do you like the new look?" She shakes out Arthur's cuffs, straightens his jacket—a perfect simulacrum wearing the suit she last saw him in.  
  
"He'll hate it," Dom says, flat. He doesn’t know why he’s so angry, and it’s the sudden flood of it, as much as the strength, that tests his self-control.  
  
"Dom!" Mal says.  
  
"I wish I could change this," Kit says. She scrubs her face with her hands, exhausted. "Believe me." Every surface going matte.  
  
****  
  
"I need a vacation," Dom tells Mal over breakfast. She's made two perfect poached eggs. Orange yolks quivering.  
  
"Me too." She picks toast out of the toaster, quick-steps it onto their shared plate then blows on her hot fingertips. "You are not allowed to buy Wonder Bread anymore," she says. "There isn't a crumb of wonder involved."  
  
"Vacation," he repeats.  
  
She breaks her yolk, dips the edge of her toast in it. "I wish we had time," she says.  
  
Dom nuzzles her neck. "I hear dreaming’s nice this time of year," he says.  
  
She stills. Then: "Maybe." She puts down her fork. "Maybe."  
  
****  
  
They sleep, and then sleep again. Two levels under. Kit had shown them how. She'd said time passes even slower, in the second level. "We could reduce it to a crawl, maybe, one more level down."  
  
"Not yet," Mal says.  
  
"I think we can be bolder," Kit says. "We've yet to face any truly troubling complications."  
  
"You're not Arthur anymore," Dom says. He lights a match easily, leaning against a bit of statue, scuffing his shoes.  
  
Kit looks over at him, her mouth tightening a little bit. "The sun sets," she says.  
  
They wade into dreaming for their vacation, just his and Mal’s. Nestled into a low valley. A fog tumbling, slipping across their feet. He can feel the wet on his bare skin.  
  
"We'll go down in history, eventually," he tells Mal. "They'll want to know our story." They are giants in a landscape made to hold the weight of their bodies.  
  
"What comes first?" Mal asks. "Will they ask you to write a book?"  
  
"We'll all write books," Dom says. "Bestsellers, every one." He hums. "Maybe not Arthur's."  
  
Mal laughs. She pulls his arms around her, steps up onto her toes to look him in the eye. "And who will you dedicate your story to? It's very important."  
  
"To my wife."  
  
She drops onto her heels. She wraps her arms around his waist, smiles into his chest. "It's short."  
  
"Is it?"  
  
"But not lacking sentiment." She touches his belt.  
  
"To Mal, of whom there never was—" He clears his throat. "Of whom there never was, there never will be, there is no other."  
  
"That one's nice, too," she says. Swaying.  
  
"To you. Today it's raining a little. Wear a coat. I love you."  
  
She grips his shirt in fistfuls. She looks up at him, in the way that had first made him love her. Reading the lines of him, as if there was much to learn. As if there were more to him than the parts that make up his body, more than the feet under him that keeps him standing.  
  
"And yours? Who would you dedicate yours to?" He raises an eyebrow, an exaggerated displeasure clouding his face. "Arthur?"  
  
She lets go of the cotton of his shirt. She smoothes her hands over him, her fingertips questing, Braille rising on his skin. "To my husband. Whose every good morning stirs my heart," she says, her voice unraveled at the seams.  
  
****  
  
Arthur’s projections are noticeably more physical with him. "Jesus Christ," Dom says, after the sixth shoulder shoved hard into his. "Lighten the fuck up." Dom’s voice isn’t raised, but he doesn’t usually swear. It’s a crude method of communication.

  
“Feel free to point and shoot,” Arthur says, by way of apology. “Maybe you’ll finally find some catharsis from the life-scarring trauma you endured in our first dream together.”  
  
“Solicitous,” Dom says, but he leaves his weapon holstered. Six marines have been drafted to have their minds act as sites of battle, waves of projections gunned down with army approval, but Dom prefers to keep every bit of the dreamer alive. The best way to forestall unforeseen and unintended consequences is to proceed with caution.  
  
Arthur's had an itchy trigger finger since finding out the projections could die with no immediate consequences. But that is, perhaps, understandable.  
  
Dom keeps sighting Arthur as they move ahead, situating his movements around Arthur’s. Arthur forces a grim composure upon his face and the projections turn away for a moment, only to again bounce glances off of Dom, to walk a little too near.  
  
Arthur scowls, and the pureness of expression almost makes Dom start. He wants to photograph it for Mal. "I'm not going to fall in love with your wife,” Arthur bites out in forced confession. “You’ve wanted to ask for days now. Just do it.”  
  
Dom fights off a bristle. “Now now,” he says, then buttons his lip, pushes ahead and leads the way up the stairs to a building he’d seen in Arthur’s head before, through the door of an elementary school. He takes deep, steady breaths and thinks of the many different ways he appreciates Arthur. There are several, most of them revolving around a deep appreciation for and reliance on his efficacy.  
  
Finally, they stop. Dom stands at a child’s locker, an Apatosaurus sticker affixed to orange paint. Arthur is over his shoulder and Dom can’t keep quiet any longer. "You think I'm jealous," he says. "But if you do fall into unrequited love, it's no skin off my nose."  
  
"Fine," Arthur says.  
  
Dom snorts. He looks up at Arthur's distant profile, annoyed at the distance he sees there. "I'm worried for you,” Dom finally spits out. “Mal would like to have you as a friend, ten years from now. Maybe more." Dom shrugs. “I could stand to see you around then, too.”  
  
Arthur looks down at Dom. He takes his hand off his gun. There might be surprise on his face, if he would bother to let it show. "Let's take it a decade at a time," he says.  
  
 _Arthur_ , Dom thinks. _Glib underneath all that capability_. He pulls away the lock. Secrets Arthur’s kept from himself lying there, written in careful pencil, on wide-ruled paper. "They don’t look like much, do they?”  
  
“Go ahead and read them to me,” Arthur says. “Tell me what I need to know.”  
  
“Me?” Dom holds out the papers. “I’ve seen enough of your mind.”  
  
“Please,” Arthur says. He lifts an eyebrow. “What more could surprise you?”  
  
Dom's curious, he has to admit, and he shrugs his acquiescence, rifles through the papers.  
  
Arthur clears his throat. “While I’m not in love with Mal, I do have eyes and an insistent libido.” He looks away, hands behind his back. “Unrelated. Continue.”  
  
****  
  
He gets sick. Not debilitatingly so but his dreams are a mess, one melting into another, a riot of color, every step a slog through wet sand.  
  
"Desk duty," Mal says.  
  
"Desk duty," Arthur says, but his tone is more satisfied.  
  
Dom flips him off, discreetly.  
  
He transcribes and puts together reports for a week and a half before he feels like he’s going to go out of his mind. “Kill me,” he says to Mal, one night after he wakes up with a particularly splitting headache.  
  
She smoothes a hand over his forehead, helps him to sit up. “I’m sorry, Dominic. This is something you’ll have to suffer through.” She brings a glass of water to his lips. “Now, drink.”  
  
****  
  
Dom returns to work, not well, but able. Mal is with him in every dream—he has a lingering tendency to soften the edges of every world they enter, to leave everything just out-of-focus—and Mal glosses over his weakness with a sheen of diffuse light, or by shifting vistas into landscapes created by brushstrokes.  
  
They’re sitting with Kit, in a field of grass. Under a mosquito net, with the sun low, floating in yellow light. He’d fallen asleep with his head in Mal’s lap, Kit sitting cross-legged in front of them and when he wakes up, he doesn’t open his eyes, listens to the susurrations of their consonants, their vowels.  
  
“It hasn’t been a perfect situation,” Kit says. “I’ve tried to recreate my favorite memories, but—” She laughs. “They always sort of make me blue.”  
  
“I thought I was the only one,” Mal says. “I loved my grandmother’s pied-a-terre as a girl. It wasn’t the loveliest of buildings, but I remember she had this huge four-post bed that took up her bedroom. I could just barely squeeze around it, to read all the letters I’d written her. She’d pinned them to her bedroom wall.” She runs a thumb over Dom’s eyebrow. “But I felt sad as soon as I walked through the door again."  
  
“Nostalgia, maybe?” Kit says.  
  
“Do you think so?” Mal sighs. “I always thought nostalgia was a happier feeling, underneath it all. That I had lived a life wonderful.”  
  
The noise of Kit shifting. “Maybe I wasn’t sad so much as afraid. I spent what felt like days, recreating the details of a particular steakhouse. And then when I sat down, it took all I had to take that first bite of my porterhouse." She laughs. "My hands were shaking."  
  
Mal reaches over him. He's not sure for what reason. He turns his face into her belly. She was reaching for Kit’s hands, maybe.  
  
"I had to change the tablecloth to the wrong color before I could eat." Kit sighs. "It was supposed to be red, the same color as the sweater my younger brother was wearing."  
  
"What color did you change it to?"  
  
"I don't know," Kit says. "White, probably."  
  
"Kit!" Mal says suddenly. "I miss you, sometimes and so much, when I'm awake."  
  
"What's happening up there? I didn't know if I should ask."  
  
Mal seems to relax, settle back, but her thighs are tensed, and she pinches, gently, at Dom's earlobe. "They're pressuring me. Everyone, really. They want more results, and answers to questions that scare me."  
  
"What kind of questions?"  
  
"They want you to go down deeper."  
  
Kit exhales. "I told you; I think that's the logical next—"  
  
"Then they want to wake you up and keep you that way. They want to see how well you retain the memory of skills learned while dreaming. If they could compress years of training into a few good nights' rest. If it truly takes root."  
  
"It's sound."  
  
"Don't pretend like you're comfortable with the suggestion!" Mal says. "You're not."  
  
Kit says nothing for a moment. When she speaks again, her tone is clipped, a formal cadence. "See if you can remember this tip when you wake up. The Department of Defense gets what it wants. Find a way to make the process something you can bear, because the end result is inevitable."  
  
Mal gently extricates herself from under Dom. When he opens his eyes, she's standing, looming over him. The ground is shaking, grass ripped out of the earth, the air filling with blades. "I won't bend," she says.  
  
"What are you looking for here? Your worshippers to rise in rebellion?" Kit asks, a wistful smile on her face. "Sometimes I'm so unsure, if you're real."  
  
****  
  
A flood of supporting evidence rolls in, once Dom has been made aware of the argument. Deadlines that used to have some slack built into them go tight as piano wire. “We requested doors that open outwardly,” Dom is told. “Please do not deviate from the specs as written.”  
  
“Build us a jail, Mr. Cobb,” they tell him. “One that the prisoners won’t recognize for what it is.”  
  
“Would it be possible,” Director Barron asks, a faint smile on his lips, “to make the terrain flatter? No quarter for those who would hide.”  
  
“At this point, they should just ask me to recreate Tartarus and be done with it,” Dom says to Arthur. The conference room is empty; a meeting had been requested for noon and Dom had been frog-marched into place by Arthur fifteen minutes beforehand.  
  
“We’ve entered a delicate phase,” Arthur says. “People more important than you or I—and yes, Dom, such people exist—are sitting up in their seats. They’ve caught wind of the possibility that this billion-dollar project may now be ready to pay dividends and they want to see how much they can squeeze out of us.”  
  
“I don’t like it.” Dom spins in his conference room chair. He watches Arthur shrug off his suit jacket, drape it over his arm. “You seem to have adjusted quickly.”  
  
“Yes,” Arthur says. “That can be credited to the fact that I have five senses which I put to use instead of daydreaming about Zumthor’s baths and my future memoirs. It’s allowed me a two month head start. I’m sure the rude awakening you’re suffering is much shittier.”  
  
“Your chapter’s a bear,” Dom says. “I’m not fair or kind.”  
  
“I look forward to being contacted by your fact-checker,” Arthur says.  
  
“Your suit makes you look like an asshole.”  
  
“My suit forces four star generals to realize that I take myself very seriously. They’ll decide from there whether I’m giving myself too much credit or not.”  
  
“What do my clothes communicate?”  
  
“That you take ease in your privilege.” Arthur looks at him, deadly serious. “Be careful, Cobb.”  
  
****  
  
Arthur’s words eat at him. Dom paces throughout the meeting, only taking a seat when asked to, firmly, for the fourth time. He sneers at the politics of it all, at Arthur’s eminently practical kowtowing.  
  
 _We will not bend_ , he thinks.  
  
“Impossible,” he begins to say. “It can’t be done.”  
  
“It’s outside the realm of probability,” he says. “I could build a maze that the subject would never be able to escape, but once he wakes up, the puzzle goes up like so much smoke. The corral of his mind lasts only as long as he sleeps.”  
  
“There could still be use there,” Barron says. He has an easy smile that Dom hates the sight of. “A sense of time is still evident in the dream. If we subject a man to solitary imprisonment long enough, even if it is only in a dream, couldn’t we soften his mind a little? Perhaps create a vulnerability to exploit?”  
  
“He’ll have a flood of projections at his beck and call.”  
  
“We’ll neutralize them.”  
  
Dom raises an eyebrow, skeptical. “Have you used the PASIV before, Director Barron?”  
  
“Twice.”  
  
“Forget the projections for a moment. Yes, there is an awareness of time passing in the dream, but it’s a cognizance we impose upon waking. During the dream itself—time passes in fits and starts. You begin reconstructing the Hanging Gardens and look up to find it ready for seeding. It’s only when I think back on the process that I can feel the minutes slipping by.”  
  
“We can impose a more structured linearity,” Barron muses. “With the right cocktail.” He smiles and Dom controls his instinct to recoil. “You’ve been immensely helpful.”  
  
“Despite my best efforts,” Dom says.  
  
“That,” Barron says, “read more as your true sentiment than as a joke. You may try again, if you like.”  
  
Dom calculates. I could take you apart, he wants to say. Open up all your boxes.  
  
****  
  
“I can’t,” Mal says. “I can’t anymore. We’ll quit tomorrow. Promise me.”  
  
“Could you?” Dom asks. “You’d lose the say you have now.”  
  
“Say!” Mal laughs. “What say? They tell me to jump and I negotiate them down from three feet to two.”  
  
“You keep them from pushing Kit down any more levels of consciousness. You put a leash on Arthur’s otherwise-boundless capacity for destroying projections. You make me ask why exactly they would want me to build an oasis that remains forever just-out-of-reach.”  
  
“Out of _fear_.” She has circles under her eyes. “All my excitement for the unknown has turned to terror.”  
  
Dom’s stomach hollows. He fights the adrenaline his body releases into his bloodstream, searches for a calm to relay to his wife. “Mallorie,” he says.  
  
“Why did you let me bring you into this?” she demands. Her voice raised. “How could you be so stupid? Tell me ‘no’; or do you have no spine at all?”  
  
He goes to hold her, furious and silent, and she struggles in his grip, shoving at his chest. “Idiot! Why did I marry you? Why?”  
  
“Mallorie,” he says. His fingertips going white on her shoulders and he forces himself to grip her with less force. “Be careful what you say.”  
  
She lets out a low sob. She stares up into his eyes, shaking. “Could you do it?” she asks.  
  
He says nothing.  
  
“This is not the construction of another battleground, or temple, or a prison, Dominic. They are asking you to impose a foreign order upon the mind. They are asking you to create a mandated structure to govern a man’s thoughts. Could you do it?” She shakes her head. “How could anyone?”  
  
“We’ll go. We’ll leave the country if we have to.” He’s grasping at straws. “But if it’s impossible, where’s the harm in trying?”  
  
“There’s harm, Dominic.” She pushes him away, goes to their kitchen counter, her head in her hands. “Everywhere I look, I see harm.”  
  
“You’ll say no when I can’t. If I ever get close.”  
  
She looks into the distance, chewing at her lip, her fingers at the curve of her jaw. “And what if I can’t hold?” she asks. Quiet and dark.  
  
They forgot to turn on the lights.  
  
****  
  
Mal is hard on Arthur. “Your vest is ridiculous,” she says. “And your pants need to be hemmed.”  
  
“I haven’t had time to find a good tailor,” Arthur says. His brow furrows, and he flips a pen between his fingers, so quickly it seems to bend in smooth arcs.  
  
“Stop,” she says, snatching the pen from his fingers. “Please, Arthur. The sight of you in a suit is making me physically ill.”  
  
He stands, stares coolly at her.  
  
“What?” she demands. She raises her chin.  
  
Arthur opens his mouth, but Dom, tucked away in a corner of the room, lifts his neck, scratches at his Adam’s apple. He clears his throat.  
  
Arthur lapses back into stillness.  
  
“If someone doesn’t indulge in my need for a fight in the next ten seconds, I’ll scream,” Mal warns. She kicks off her shoes.  
  
Arthur looks down at his nails. “You’re a fucking mess, Mal,” he says.  
  
“Round one!” says Dom, and Arthur cracks a smile. Mal laughs, too, and only for the slightest bit too long.  
  
****  
  
“We could just turn off the PASIV,” Dom says, a little later, after Arthur’s gone for coffee. “Kit will have to wake up.”  
  
“We don’t know that,” Mal says. “Her mind is so deeply sedated. And we’ve put a clock, effectively, in the compound. Who knows if she will be able to follow the thread back? If she’ll have time, in the seconds after we disconnect her?”  
  
“It’s conjecture, at this point.” Dom cracks his neck. “Hey,” he says, standing. He takes her in his arms. “We’ll bring her back. We’ll go down again, and find her.”  
  
“I know,” Mal says. She turns into his neck, her lips moving against his pulse. She half-forms words.  
  
“It’s not your fault,” he says.  
  
“We introduced too many new elements at once,” Mal finally says. “I could have insisted they separate the trial for the new compound from the dive into a fourth level.”  
  
“You insisted,” Cobb says.  
  
“But I could have thrown a fit.” Mal laughs. “I should have kicked off my shoes then. Wielded a heel.”  
  
They rock, back and forth, her arms around his waist. He kisses her hair. He takes care not to crush her with the weight of him. “Should I recite you your poem?”  
  
She groans.  
  
“I’m starting to think you don’t like it,” he says. He narrows his eyes at her. “Most women would find it extremely romantic, to have a poem written by their husband.”  
  
“Mm.” She shrugs. “Recite it, then.”  
  
He straightens his shoulders, coughs. He squeezes her hard. “Mal,” he intones, “a haiku is // very constrictive, much like // vows. P.S. I do.”  
  
“And to think,” Mal says. “I didn’t swoon right there at the altar when you read those to me.”  
  
He grins.  
  
“Will Arthur go in after her, do you think? If I ask?” she asks suddenly.  
  
“I thought I’d distracted you,” Dom says.  
  
She smiles fondly at his face. He touches the lines, growing there at the corners of her eyes.  
  
****  
  
Arthur wakes up gasping next to Kit. Over and over. The machines monitoring his heart, his breathing, his brain activity reading out in spiking blades. “I’m fine,” he says, immediately, but his eyes are wild and his fingers fly to where the cannula of the PASIV sinks into his veins. Every time.  
  
Mal has been banished from the room. From this floor. A prerequisite for Arthur’s agreement to enter Kit’s dreams. Dom thought it strange, briefly, that she would agree so easily to step away, but there’s been a hesitance about her. He doesn’t know what it is.  
  
The last time, Arthur’s eyes fly open, then smash closed again as he doubles over, keening. “I’m fine,” he pants. “It’s in my head. It’s in my head.”  
  
Dom rolls up his sleeve. “I’m coming with you. I should have been with you from the start.”  
  
****  
  
Sleeping is different with the new compound. He can feel the beat of his heart, a counting-out-rhythm in his fingertips, in the number of breaths he takes.  
  
Kit is nowhere to be seen. Just a flood of projections that have learned to recognize those who are not right. When Dom is crowded off of the edge of this world, there are ten seconds until impact. He thinks of Miles. He didn’t think his father-in-law would be the last face that flashes before his eyes before death, but there it is.  
  
The way Miles had taken off his glasses, pinched the bridge of his nose. The way he pursed his lips. The way he said, “Do not let them change the foundation of who you are. You are a builder. We dream up structures and then we erect them in the sky.”  
  
****  
  
It isn’t until the fifth time under, together, that Arthur and Dom make it to the third level. There, they race down the steps into an underground tunnel, avoid the branching tunnel that leads to an enclosed, unexplainably sunlit garden, and press themselves into a service closet. Arthur wedges a chair against the door.  
  
“That won’t hold,” Cobb says.  
  
“Shut the fuck up,” Arthur says, lugging out the PASIV.  
  
****  
  
The fourth level is a strip of sand, surrounded by nothing. Dom pictures waves lapping at a shore, staining white grains dark and wet, and suddenly there’s a shallow sea, blooming. A limitless expanse at the touch of his mind.  
  
Arthur is shucked down to his boxers. “I hate it here,” he says.  
  
“It’s so quiet,” Dom says.  
  
“What the fuck,” Arthur says.  
  
Wind, Dom thinks, and the water ripples around him. Arthur’s soft, product-less hair waving. His heart is racing. _Mal_ , he thinks. _Look. This life is easy._  
  
The bottom gives out from underneath them. Arthur disappears beneath the water, then rises again, cresting; swimming in long, sure pulls.  
  
****  
  
Dom’s been swimming for a long time. His arms are tired. “Keep moving,” Arthur says from next to him, so Dom does.  
  
There’s splashing, faint, behind him. Like someone might be struggling, but Dom is too tired to turn his head. He should reach shore. Mal is waiting. There’s a light, melting until it's pure and white and Dom blinks, blinks, he blinks—  
  
*****  
  
“Dom?” Mal’s nose. Her cheeks and mouth and eyes. “Dom, how do you feel?”  
  
Dom swallows, throat lined in sand, usually pliable tissue like jerky. “Thirsty,” he says, and she brings a paper cup to his mouth, pours water across his lips. She kisses him, after, then goes to Arthur, caresses his forehead, rolls her eyes when Arthur brushes her hand away gently, tells her that he’s fine.  
  
There is no needle in Dom’s arm. It feels strange, to wake and find your veins uninvaded. “Did you—did you unplug us while we were dreaming?” he asks.  
  
“See!” Director Barron is in the room, a fact Dom had overlooked until his voice erupts from the chair on the other side of Kit’s bed. “It was the most obvious solution, and here they are, our sleepers returned. Still sharp, your husband.”  
  
“A word,” Mal says, searingly sweet.  
  
“Kit isn’t awake,” Arthur says. He’s standing at her bedside.  
  
****  
  
“Be reasonable,” the director says.  
  
“Your face means nothing to me,” Mal says. Her heels bring her to a height an inch above his. “I don’t know why you keep bothering me with it.”  
  
The director laughs. _Strange_ , Dom thinks. It is hard to read his face. Even while looking at it, the features seem just beyond familiar. “I’ve pushed you to the far reaches of your self control," the director says. “I didn’t think that would ever happen.”  
  
Mal studies him, removing her jacket. She lies next to Kit, both of them connected to the device. “You sound pleased,” she says, and there’s a threat behind her words, slinking through her tone.  
  
The director says nothing.  
  
“If you pull us from the PASIV, I’ll do more things to bring you joy,” Mal says.  
  
Arthur straightens from where he’s leaning against the wall. “I should come with you.”  
  
Dom stands at her side. “She can do this alone,” he says. He leans down, close to her ear. “Do you want to?” he whispers.  
  
“I should,” Mal says. Her hand is cold when she lays it over his. “I’m scared,” she whispers.  
  
“You’ve done this a million times. It’s the same.”  
  
She nods. She touches every knuckle on his left hand.  
  
****  
  
Dom calls Miles, the instant the director steps out of the room. “Don’t worry,” he tells Miles.  
  
“I’m not worried,” he snaps. “I would have had to be immensely stupid not to prepare myself for at least a digression into a bad spot.”  
  
“She’ll have to adjust to the new compound. They’ve added something to the Somnacin. The time goes by in clicks, now.”  
  
“Why do they insist on making everything so pedestrian?” Miles asks.  
  
“You sound genuinely perplexed,” Dom says.  
  
****  
  
“This is production-wasteful," the director blusters upon his return, a hand reaching for the needle in Kit’s arm.  
  
Arthur brings his elbow back, takes a step and smashes that momentum into the bones of Barron's face, drops the man where he stands. He turns. “Yes,” he says. “There was a time when I was good and kind and brave!”  
  
Dom beams.  
  
****  
  
He sings into Mal’s ear. Something stupid. He can’t really carry a tune.  
  
Kit wakes up. She tries to sit up, pushing with her arms, but her body had already begun to waste away, in this life. Arthur jolts, then is at her side, helping her up. “You’re okay,” he tells her.  
  
“Am I awake?” she asks.  
  
“Yes,” Dom says, voice strangled. He looks back to Mallorie, her closed eyes.  
  
“Jesus,” Kit says. “Are you sure?”  
  
“You’re awake,” Arthur tells her firmly. Dom didn’t know his eyes could look so kind. “Hi, Kit. It’s been a while.”  
  
Kit takes in a shuddering breath. She clutches her hands to her chest as she stares at Arthur. As if she’s terrified of what they could do. “God, Arthur. Arthur. Look at you.”  
  
“I have them cut your hair. Keep it regulation,” Arthur says. Reassuring her of all the things she doesn’t know. That she couldn’t recreate. “I had steak and eggs for breakfast this morning, at the diner off Columbia that opened last week.”  
  
“Is she coming,” Dom demands. “Is she waking up?”  
  
Kit looks him in the eye. “Yes,” she says. “She was behind me. Lighting the path in front of me.”  
  
“Kit,” Dom says. “You look different.” He feels proud of Mal. More pride than he knows what to do with, and it makes his fingers lock, his chest constrict.  
  
****  
  
He whispers, “Love, love, love.” He says it into the palm of her hand. Helping her to catch the words.  
  
Barron wakes up before Mal does. “Don’t dare to leave this room,” he says, then locks the door behind him.  
  
It’s fine. Dom wasn’t going anywhere. Deep between his ribs, he feels the injustice of Barron waking up before his wife lodge uncomfortably.  
  
“I think he’s holding it against me,” Arthur says. “The punch.”  
  
“You hit him?” Kit asks, a satisfied gleam in her eye.  
  
Dom is tracing around the bump of needle under skin when Mal’s eyes fly open, and he says, “ _Fuck_.” Almost tears it out of her in his hurry to pull her from the machine that kept her sleeping. She grabs the front of Dom’s shirt. “We’re done with this,” she says. “We’re done.” and Dom can only process her words halfway, too eager to kiss her, to feel her lips move under his. His hands are shaking.  
  
“We should probably go anyway,” Arthur says. “I have a feeling we won’t want to be here when our asshole-in-chief saunters back in.”  
  
Dom licks his lips. “It’ll be worse if we run, I think.” He holds Mal tight. He will never stop touching her.  
  
Kit nods. “I’ve faced disciplinary hearings before. You keep your head down and plow ahead.”  
  
“No,” Mal says. “I’ve dreamed with him. We’re going. We’re not coming back.”  
  
Dom can’t bring himself to say yes. He remembers what it is to have his acts of creation fettered by brick, by gravity and stone. And to live in a world less lovely, where every inch doesn’t contain something he thinks beautiful…he drops his head, studying the white skin of Mal’s inner arms. _It’s too easy to find yourself caged_ , he thinks. _Bars just rising around you._  
  
“I can’t,” Kit says.  
  
“You’re not staying,” Arthur says. You couldn’t break him if you tried.  
  
“We are done with this,” Mal says again. She raises Dom’s face, holds it in both her hands.  
  
“You make it sound easy,” Dom says.  
  
“Please,” she says.  
  
“Hop to it,” Arthur says.  
  
****  
  
The three of them step out of the door, a shaky confidence in their mutual decision, but Dom realizes what will happen too late to stop the door from closing behind them. “Guess who,” he breathes, and Mal leaps. She pounds at the little window.  
  
Kit drags a chair right up against the door. She rests her head against it, and Mal slams the heel of her palm where the top of Kit’s head curves. “Open this door, now,” Mal commands. “You locked it. Did you know you locked it? Open the door, Kit.”  
  
Kit looks up. She looks tired. “You brought me up a level too far,” she says.  
  
"This is not a level." Mal’s lips are white. “I won’t forgive you,” she warns. Dom curls a hand around her wrist.  
  
“I hope—” Kit’s voice grows choked, and wet. “I hope you don’t feel like it was a waste, coming in after me. You are my closest, my closest friend.”  
  
“I won’t go without you.” Mallorie, unsheathed.  
  
There are footsteps coming down the hallway. About to turn the corner, men to rival the projections in Arthur’s mind. Every one with a distinct face.  
  
“We have to go,” Arthur says. He steps between Kit and Mal, hands on either side of Mal’s neck. “Mal. We have to go.”  
  
“Not without her.” She pushes by Arthur, asks Kit, pleading: “How could you ask me to go without you?”  
  
“Mallorie,” says Dom. “Please. I’m begging.” He forces Mal to look him in the eye, throws a quick glance to Kit, who nods at him. He’s torn between panic and anger. A slick knife of envy.  
  
“I couldn’t,” Mal says. “I couldn’t leave you if I wanted to, Kit, I couldn’t just _go_. I can’t—” She breaks off her search for the right words, sobs with frustration. “I hate the English language!”  
  
“This is the choice I’m making,” Kit says. “You did everything you could to change my mind. But I didn’t and I won’t.” She puts her hand to the window. “Mal. Just say what you want to say. Then go.”  
  
Mal falls against the door, her hand still on the knob. A flood of words in her native tongue, then Mal finally, finally turns away, fury in the way she moves, and relief floods Dom’s body, the nerves in his fingers tingling. He would have carried her out, if he had to.  
  
Arthur follows, then stops. He touches the tips of his fingers to the glass, taps lightly. When Kit looks up from setting the PASIV, he asks, “Why?”  
  
She smiles at him. “I suppose I love this life.” Her voice is muted by composite wood.  
  
“I don’t understand,” Arthur says, and Dom realizes, suddenly, how young Arthur still is. His boyish frame.  
  
“Arthur,” Kit says, fond and desperate and angry and hopeful and a hundred other things at once. She flickers between them. “Run,” she says.  
  
****  
  
They split apart at Arthur’s demand; Dom and Mal slamming out a window, Dom rolling in the air to land underneath her. Dom’s last glimpse of Arthur is of his shadow racing behind him as he skids down a hallway.  
  
They lie there for seconds, Dom searching for breath. Shattered glass scattering sharp-cut light. It’s the afternoon, the sun at its hottest.  
  
He’s sweating, his shirt sticking to his skin, a pain stinging at his forehead, and blood dripping, a thickened heat, down his temple. He wants Mal off of him.  
  
“I’m pregnant,” she says.  
  
 _Listen_ , he thinks. _Our hearts beat the same. The pump of blood through flesh._  
  
“I could,” she’s hyperventilating, “I could feel her—while I was sleeping. I think I could feel her around the edges. I felt like I was leaving someone behind. I kept looking. Oh god.” She moves off of him, pushes to her knees. “We have to go, now. Dom, stand up,” she commands, handling him with strong, competent hands.  
  
“You’re pregnant,” he says. It could be awe in his voice. It could be terror. We are all many things.


	2. Chapter 2

> _The willing ego, when it says, "Amo: Volo ut sis," "I love you; I want you to be”—and not "I want to have you" or "I want to rule you”—shows itself capable of the same love with which supposedly God loves men, whom He created only because He willed them to exist…_   
> 
> Hannah Arendt

  
  
Mal has always broken awake; a crack of glass and her eyes open, fully conscious. Some people—Dom, her father—drift away from sleep. Floating on their backs until they wash ashore. She can still feel the smack of consciousness that had accompanied waking from what felt like a lifetime of dreaming with Dom, the rush of adrenaline at finding her body young, her fingertips smooth. Her skull un-shattered-by-a-train.  
  
Her mornings are almost punishing in their vibrancy, but mostly she enjoys the way dawning light sets fire to her skin.  
  
She hopes for that crisp snap awake soon.  
  
She is running down an alley in a small town, a church steeple rising high above her and eclipsing the sun. She’s lost the man who was tailing her, but not for long, she knows. Soon, he will turn the corner and follow her down. She sprints, her thighs screaming, her shoes abandoned to misleadingly mark the mouth of a street down which she hadn’t gone. She doesn’t look back over her shoulder. It would only slow her down. No point in seeing where he is; as long as his hands are not on her, she is safe. There is still the possibility of escape.  
  
She comes to a stop in front of a wall. She takes the briefest of pauses, and gasps for breath, coughs at the rush of air pouring down her throat. She leaps, hands locking over the top of rough brick, and her ears strain back behind her, reaching toward the sound of pounding boots, and she screams, guttural, begging her body—the tendons and muscles and sinew—to shock her with capability.  
  
Her feet struggle for purchase, bare. She scrapes the sole of one, tearing skin. She bites her tongue, jolting herself with the pain and thinks, _There is no other choice_.  
  
A hand clamps down on her left ankle. She kicks. Instinct powered by determination. She waits for the snap, heart racing. A shout forced from her lungs as she kicks, kicks again, she—  
  
****  
  
Dom is sleeping on his stomach, next to her. He won’t be awake for another hour, most likely.  
  
She painted the walls blue during a fit of boredom, but the color dried darker than she had anticipated. She was upset by it until Dom expressed his impatience with the color she’d chosen, and then she grew to love it a little, somewhere in the defending.  
  
It keeps the room cool with watered light. She walks to the window, slides the pane up easily, her shoulders and arms and upper back working in concert. She shoves at the screen. Pushes hard with both hands, until the aluminum frame bends, until it falls with a clatter onto the ground outside.  
  
She goes back to bed. She sits, legs crossed atop unmade sheets. She slides a hand up Dom’s t-shirt, up along the dip of his back. She explores the expanse of his shoulders, rucking his shirt up, forcing it to gather under his armpits.  
  
There’s a cool wind blowing; something that had somehow found its way into their home.  
  
****  
  
It’s strange. She hadn’t thought of Kit for so long.  
  
Kit’s eyebrows had never changed. Sometimes Mal is sure of it, remembering the dark line, the way they held no curve. Looking for all the world like some steady-handed child had dashed them on with a broad-tipped marker.  
  
Other times, Mal thinks that memory is undependable. That it is probably a comfort to think she could identify Kit, in every guise; that even now—if Kit was alive somewhere in the world—Mal would know her by the sight of those dark brows, whether she came as Mal herself, or Arthur, or her brother.  
  
“I thought he was the only one I could tell,” Kit had said to Mal, once. “He was younger, but he never acted like it. He was already bigger than I was by the time he was eleven, and—he was someone easy to love. I probably should have resented him, but.” She shrugged. “Everybody loved him and I did, too.”  
  
Thinking of Kit makes her sad. Or it might be the other way around; somehow, sorrow tied up with her old, lost friend in a tangled knot.  
  
Arthur is here. He’d asked to speak to Dom alone, but Dom had only pushed him towards a corner on the opposite side of the room, bent his ear close to Arthur’s mouth. He listened with hands on his hips.  
  
Mallorie looks out the window.  
  
“Arthur is the same age as my brother would be,” Kit had said, “which is just...” She’d laughed. “Poor Arthur.”  
  
Mal laughs, too, at the memory, and Dom looks over his shoulder toward the sound. He turns his body in her direction, her smile reflected on his face, and asks, “What’s so funny?” in a way that makes her heart ache. He’s so hopeful.  
  
“Look how handsome the two of you are,” she says. She meets Arthur’s eyes, says gravely, “Hello, Arthur.”  
  
“Hi,” he says. His face impassive, but he pulls a hand out of his pocket, waves two fingers in her direction, which, she thinks, is the most generous he’s been with her in a long, long time.  
  
There are tears in her eyes again. Who knows why, this time.  
  
****  
  
When Mal gave birth to Philippa, the moment the nurse put this little parcel of a girl in Mal’s arms, Mal whispered in French --I know you. My little one, who has never been a stranger to me.  
  
“What are you saying to her?” Dom asked.  
  
“It’s a secret,” Mal says. Dom hates secrets, she knows, and she would tell him—does tell him almost everything—but.  
  
 _I want my daughter to have things to cherish from me_ , Mal thinks. _Things I give her that are all her own._  
  
****  
  
They hadn’t used a PASIV for so long. Arthur did, still, and the way he steered around certain topics, in conjunction with what she’d heard from her father, helped her to piece a picture together. Dream-sharing had escaped its government-funded cocoon, into a second economy bustling with activity that escaped illegality only because there were no laws, yet, to be held responsible to.  
  
She asked Arthur once, point blank. “They say that you are the man behind the proliferation of dream-sharing technology. Is that true?”  
  
“Yes,” Arthur said. "One of them."  
  
“Why?”  
  
“I object to the idea of one point of access to what is a potentially-addictive experience.” He smiled, grim. “Basically, I fucking hated the idea of the DOD forcing people to crawl back to them if ever they wanted to dream.”  
  
She turned that over in her mind, felt the edges of it. She asked, “So what is it exactly that you do? You break into a mind like you would a safe?”  
  
“Is that judgment I detect?” Arthur asked, buttoning his suit jacket. They’d started to look more expensive, then: unbranded.  
  
She leaned forward, putting her chin on her hand. “Explain to me how you justify it.” She was curious.  
  
“I have an insatiable hunger to know things,” Arthur said.  
  
Dom thinks Arthur glib, at times. Mal isn’t inclined to agree. Dom is always looking to be convinced, so when Arthur answers in sound-bites, he brushes any truth or revelation contained within away. “And this is the only way to know things,” she said to Arthur, carefully. It was important, this part. She must mark every place the path branches.  
  
****  
  
She tries to never, ever think of the time they had spent sleeping, except—  
  
Right before she falls asleep, she thinks of the place they had built with their two hands, with the limited scope of their minds. Limbo, Dom called it.  
  
It’s not the word that comes to mind, for her.  
  
Maybe—maybe, he began to feel trapped. The places where his imagination and hers overlapped no longer endlessly fascinating. The places her thoughts could travel and create and mutilate no longer strange to him. Maybe his curiosity had been satisfied, and their world began to feel like a cage.  
  
She knew that itch, too. But she liked growing old, in a house they actually built, with a hammer they had dreamed up and nails. She liked watching her skin grow slack, feeling the weight of her thoughts grow heavier. She tried to forget that she knew she was asleep, it’s true. But looking back...deep down in the pit of her, she knew her body here was not made of flesh and blood.  
  
She’d thought of what Dom calls Limbo as a dressing room. Off to the side of the stage, a place to put the proper clothes on, to learn your lines, to walk through every step, every decision you will make.  
  
She thinks that this, at least, was lucky: to have had the time to practice waiting.  
  
****  
  
Mother comes to stay with them. Laure used to love Dom, but Mal feels unsettled by the way Dom meets her eyes so constantly, as if willing her to find something there, and Laure senses her distress and its roots in her husband, and grows polite.  
  
“Your mother packed me a lunch,” Dom says to her, one morning. He lifts a paper bag, his name swept across the front in ballpoint pen.  
  
“She must really like you,” Mal says.  
  
“Hmm.” Dom folds the top over, then again, neat.  
  
He puts on a hat, then picks up his briefcase, the paper bag in his left hand. She follows him down the hallway, to the garage door and watches him load the backseat of their family-size sedan. “Tell Arthur I say hello,” she says, leaning against the door frame.  
  
Dom pushes his hat up, towards the back of his head. He looks at her. “The firm is only consulting. Arthur is paying me for blueprints, really.”  
  
She runs her fingers up and down the wall, brushing away cobwebs.  
  
“He keeps me in the dark about the purposes of the level I’m constructing. He knows I don’t want to know.”  
  
She shakes her head, forces a smile to her lips. “It doesn’t matter. Mama wants to have dinner ready for you when you come home. She wants to know what kind of quiche you like,” she says, and she has to laugh.  
  
****  
  
They drop Philippa off at preschool, and James perches at Mal’s waist at the greengrocer’s. Laure’s basket full of leeks and small blushing radishes, spinach and papery-skinned onions.  
  
Back at home, James refuses to go down for his nap for hours, and by the time he’s asleep, Mal is exhausted. She forces herself to walk to the kitchen, look in at her mother cooking. --Maman, she says, slipping into a language that comes easy and unforced. --Is there very much left to do?  
  
\--No, her mother replies. She puts a lid on a pot, turns, the short cut of her hair swinging. --You look tired, my heart.  
  
\--I am.  
  
\--Let’s sit, her mother says, and she checks that she set a timer, bustles Mal out of the kitchen and into the living room, fluffing a sofa pillow for Mallorie to lay her head on. Mallorie stretches out but her mother pats at her hip, urging her to draw her knees up so there is room for Laure to share the couch.  
  
The day is darkening, and Mal shuts her eyes against the coming shade.  
  
\--I still remember the day I found out I was pregnant with you, Laure says, suddenly. Her voice is gentle. --I knew, already, because of a dream I had the night before. Your father and I were driving down a road. There was traffic, of course. Long streams of cars. Your father was driving that little Fiat he had when I first met him. And suddenly, in the distance, I saw an elephant, charging toward us. Smashing cars flat with every step it took. This huge beast, trumpeting.  
  
\--And was I the beast? Mal asks.  
  
\--Maybe. Or the idea of you, Laure says, her fingers in Mal’s hair, combing it out in long, even strokes.  
  
I’ve learned to walk, Mallorie wants to say. To step carefully around the things in my way.  
  
****  
  
By the time Dom comes home, Mal has had one glass of wine too many. She is sitting on the couch with her mother, feet tucked under, laughing. “Mr. Cobb,” she says, merrily.  
  
He sets down his briefcase, shrugs off his jacket. He has a careful smile on his face. “Having a good time?” he asks, quietly.  
  
She beams, cheeks hot and flushed. She can feel the sparkle in her eyes. “Wonderful,” she says. "Sit down next to me."  
  
“I’m glad,” he says, and he hangs his coat, comes to the couch to kiss Laure’s cheek hello, and then touches his lips to Mal’s forehead. “I’m going to go put my briefcase in the closet.”  
  
“That can wait.” She takes a hold of his sleeve.  
  
He extricates himself from her grasp carefully. “Just one second.” He raises a finger. “One second.”  
  
Mal takes a long sip of wine. Her mother is looking at her, and Mal doesn’t have to see her face to know there are questions there. “So polite,” Mal says to Dom’s back. She is warm and beginning to feel over-exerted.  
  
Dom turns. “I don’t want to leave a mess for you. That’s all.” His placid face grates on her.  
  
Mal laughs at that. She stands, demands, “Who are you?” It was meant to be a joke. “Who are you,” she asks again, “and what have you done with my husband?”  
  
Dom keeps staring at her. No sign of flinching; as if this is only what he has come to expect.  
  
Laure touches Mal’s wrist. “Ma petit,” she says.  
  
****  
  
Mal had tended to favor James. Not purposefully—she had vowed to love her children equally and she does, she loves them both with a fire that could rage across worlds, consuming every dry and dusty thing in its path—but James was new, and small, and so much of Dom.  
  
He’s so different, though, when she wakes up from her long sleep. Only a little older, but her mother had warned her that toddlers are new every morning. “You learned and grew so quickly,” she’d told Mal. “Your children will, too. Faster, maybe.”  
  
“If the pattern holds,” Dom had said, “our grandkids will be immobile for only a day before they’re walking. Two weeks until they talk. Bound for college at six.” Kissing the top of James’ head.  
  
James has grown silent and watchful. He cries when she tries to sleep him in their bed.  
  
On the nights Mal dreads her dreams, when she is delirious with lack of sleep and giving in to her body’s implacable need for rest, she slips into Philippa’s bed. She curls around her daughter’s small, precious body.  
  
Tonight, maybe, she is too loud. Philippa wakes up, turns into Mal’s embrace. “Mommy?” she says.  
  
“Shh, love,” Mal says. “Mommy’s sorry she woke you. Go back to bed, back to bed, sweet.”  
  
“Why are you sleeping here?” Philippa asks.  
  
“I’m only lying here for a little while,” Mal says. “Go to sleep.” She listens, locked into place, willing herself to keep still, her lungs to stop expanding and contracting. When Philippa’s breathing has evened out, Mal relaxes. She fits the top of her daughter’s head into the crook of her neck, fingers stroking rhythmically along Philippa’s arm. "Am I a good mother to you?" she asks.  
  
****  
  
They had needed a vacation, sorely. Their lives weren’t difficult, not in the way so many others’ were, but Mal felt something like dread when she stared off into her near future, searching for a moment to breathe. “Is this what getting old is like?” she said, laughing, to Miles over the phone. “I think I am nearing complacency.”  
  
“Bite your tongue,” her father had said. “Take Somnacin and call me in the morning.”  
  
“Could I?” she surprised Miles, even joking about taking his offer at face value. She surprised herself, too.  
  
Her father recovered quickly, took aim. “There are still so many questions about deep-dreaming; questions you are uniquely equipped to answer. If you and Dominic could go back down, to a safe depth, of course, we could gain a keener insight.”  
  
“For the next person,” Mal said.  
  
“You could create a protocol, yes,” he said. “I have a PASIV you can use. It’s old, but not much worse for the wear. And your friend, Arthur, has a near-frightening store of chemical compounds.”  
  
“I think that’s supposed to be a secret,” Mal tutted. “He’ll be upset that I’ve found out.”  
  
“Don’t be disingenuous, love; you knew,” Miles said. “Are you convinced? Will I also have to persuade Dominic?”  
  
She scoffed. “He’ll jump at the chance. He’s been hinting around for years now.”  
  
“Take a couple of weeks. Consider it a job. Ask your mother to watch the children. Go down a few levels, and you’ll come back more than rested."  
  
“I’m tempted,” she had said. “Is it selfish?”  
  
****  
  
She had a miscarriage, which has nothing to do with anything really. It wasn’t awful, the way she might have imagined it would be.  
  
She had been four months along. A night in the hospital and she was back to work, project-managing for a firm in Sweden hoping to aggressively expand into the American market, waking up at four a.m. to rock James side-to-side, fielding calls from Arthur, to whom she explains that she is upset, of course, but that no, her world has not come apart with grief.  
  
The good thing is that they hadn’t bought too many things new. James had only just stopped being a baby, so they didn’t need to return much. Just a few odds and ends.  
  
It would be silly to say that it was anything but a small, tiny part of the reason why Mal found the idea of staying in the dream so appealing. Just a little bit longer. Things don't just...happen to you there.  
  
****  
  
Mal wakes up in Philippa’s bed at six in the morning. She untangles herself from her daughter’s limbs and goes to the kitchen for a glass of water. She mentally calculates the time in Paris; her youngest sister should just be arriving home from classes, so she picks up the phone.  
  
Dominic is already on the line. “If you ask me again, Arthur, I’ll stop answering your phone calls. Do you understand?”  
  
“I fucking hate when you make me parrot answers back at you. Yes, Dom, I understand. Ass.” He pauses only for a moment. “You really should consider joining the team in the field for this job. I know you don’t like to dream-share anymore, but this is an opportunity to do some real good.”  
  
“Arthur,” Dom says.  
  
“I didn’t ask,” Arthur points out. “I posed a statement, which you can share your opinion on if you’d like.”  
  
“Clever,” Dom says sarcastically. “I think you’ve become entirely too sure of your own capabilities.”  
  
“The art of flipping an omelet has still escaped me,” Arthur says. “Take heart.”  
  
Dom huffs out a laugh. “Arthur. Seriously, okay? I won’t do it. Have me plan. Call me for all the blueprints you need. I’m not going under.”  
  
“Why?” Arthur demands. He won’t stop until you give him a reason, Mal wants to warn Dom. “This barely counts as criminal activity.”  
  
“You’re toying with the mind of an elected official of the people,” Dom says.  
  
“In _Iran_ , where the elections are so rigged, I could put Blagojevich in Tehran so long as he had the Ayatollah’s endorsement.”  
  
“You’re attempting something completely beyond extraction.” Dom sighs. “You don’t know what could happen. What the consequences of changing things in his mind could be. An accidental tweak to a childhood memory and he could be a new person when he wakes up." He sounds world-weary.  
  
"You would be doing good,” Arthur says.  
  
“My intentions would be good,” Dom corrects. His voice decibels deeper and rumbling, the way it always is, mornings. “Can we talk about something else?”  
  
Arthur is silent. “Fine,” he says, in the end. “What the fuck is up with Mal?”  
  
“Arthur!” Mal says, immediately. She doesn’t stop to think, and her reprisal syncs with Dom’s, a concert calling of their friend’s name.  
  
“Mal?” Dom asks.  
  
“I’m right here,” Mal says, still indignant at the way Arthur had questioned her state of mind.  
  
“I know,” Arthur says. He sounds like he’s grinning. “I could hear you breathing over the line.”  
  
“You’re genetically enhanced,” Mal says. “It’s the only explanation.”  
  
“How long have you been on the line?” Dom asks. “Sweetheart,” he adds.  
  
“Do you very often ask Dominic what the fuck is wrong with me?” Mal asks.  
  
“No,” Arthur says, “out of respect for the air of tragic mystery he’s cultivated around himself. But he’s pushed my patience to the limit and I thought I might as well put it all out there.”  
  
“Bold,” Mal observes.  
  
“Well?” Arthur asks. “So what’s wrong with you?”  
  
“Arthur,” Mal laughs. She’s delighted. “I was beginning to feel like you’d forgotten who I was.” The phone tucked under her ear, and when she looks up, she finds Dom, leaning against the kitchen counter, arms crossed over his chest, smiling an old, once-familiar smile at her.  
  
She likes the underwear he’s wearing. Blue cotton boxers, cut high on his thighs.  
  
****  
  
She doesn’t let him take his underwear off. She slides a hand into his boxers, pulls his hard cock out. She sinks onto it, the long shirt she's wearing gathered up around her hips.  
  
His arm wraps around her lower back, pulling her deeper onto him, a hand gripping her ass so hard she knows she will bruise.  
  
"Tell me when you're close," he demands. He leans in, presses his forehead to hers. His mouth questing. He kisses her, pants into her mouth. "Close? Tell me when, honey."  
  
She doesn't tell; it takes her by surprise when she comes, a startling wave of pleasure that came too sly to notice.  
  
****  
  
He comes home from work for lunch. Laure has taken James out for a walk around the neighborhood, so Mal is alone when he comes through the door.  
  
They fuck in the foyer. He has her exposed, his tie slung over his shoulder, and two fingers deep inside her, spreading her open, and she gasps, "Condom, condom."  
  
"Please, love," he says. "Please."  
  
"Dominic," she says. She pushes at his chest.  
  
He groans, frustrated. "I can't even remember the last time I bought some," he says.  
  
"I can't imagine being pregnant again." Mal lets out a broken laugh. She's aching for him.  
  
His eyes go dark. "I can," he says. He bucks against her.  
  
****  
  
"I've created a monster," she says, smiling, that night. She is lying back in bed, with his head between her legs.  
  
He nuzzles the inside of her thigh, mouths at the tender skin there.  
  
"Ah," she says. "Stop."  
  
"I was too rough," Dom says.  
  
"No." Mallorie stretches in bed. "I'm a little tired, though."  
  
"Just lie back. You don't have to do anything but let me taste you." He says it so matter-of-factly.  
  
"Dominic, don't," she says, but she sighs at the feeling of his tongue on her clit.  
  
"I'll beg," Dominic warns. "Just a taste," he says.  
  
****  
  
After, he goes to the bathroom to jerk off. She can see him in the mirror, his flexing arm.  
  
The sink runs, and the light snaps off, pulling dark over the room. He comes back to bed, fits himself to her back. He kisses her neck.  
  
"You could have done that next to me," she says.  
  
"Hm." He shifts closer to her. "Easier to clean up, there."  
  
"You made me a Peeping Tom," she jokes, accusing.  
  
He sighs. He opens his mouth as if to speak, but doesn't.  
  
"What?" she asks.  
  
"I—" He puts an arm around her, the other stretched over her head. "Was there something awful to you about our lives here?" It comes out in a rush. "Why didn't you want to come back?"  
  
He's tricked her into an exchange she hadn't realized she was making. She tears herself from where she lies, pinned to the mattress, kicks free of the sheets. She walks away, desperate for air, and he lets her go.  
  
****  
  
She's angry. She can't put it into words, why, but she is, and she pulls on a coat, walks out of the house. Who knows if she will come back.  
  
She goes to the park three blocks away, where she brings James, and Philippa, too, on the weekends.  
  
She sits on a swing. There is no moon. There are no stars. She pushes away from the sand, pumps her legs. She is propelled toward the sky. _When I am high enough_ , she thinks, _I'll jump._  
  
****  
  
She comes home close to dawn, when she knows Dom has left for work. Laure is sitting in the living room, glasses on her nose, a book turned face down on her lap.  
  
When Mal closes the door behind her, her mother says, "Good."  
  
She rises, comes to Mal, kisses her on both cheeks. "Dom told me you had a fight."  
  
"Did he?" Mal asks. She's cold, her skin damp from the morning.  
  
"Yes. I'm supposed to call him, now that you're back." Her mother brushes the remains of a spider web from Mal's hair. --Don't feel like you have to stay, she says. Life takes paths no one can anticipate.  
  
\--Mother, Mallorie says.  
  
\--I know you still think that it was selfish, the way I left your father. Laure looks, suddenly, old. Every one of her 62 years rising to the surface.  
  
Mal can still feel the edges of that familiar hurt. How lost her father had seemed for those first few years. She tries not to let it show on her face.  
  
\--Survival requires a little selfishness, her mother says. --I suppose it was awful to find out I can be cruel. She cups Mal's cheek. --It was awful for me, too.  
  
****  
  
She calls Dominic at work.  
  
"Dominic Cobb," he answers.  
  
"There was nothing wrong with our life," Mal says.  
  
"Then why try to forget that we had something to wake up for?" He's unfazed, as if he had been preparing for this conversation. Seen it at twenty paces.  
  
 _Unfair_ , Mal thinks. She isn't ready to answer this question. She doesn't know the answer. You think you understand, she wants to tell him. You think I hid my totem away to forget that we had lives, and regrets, and children, obligations and little joys—  
  
I just wanted to enjoy what we had, there in the dream. To remember what it is to be truly unfettered.  
  
She isn't sure how that admission would sound on her tongue. Whether it would come out ashamed or defiant.  
  
"You tell me," she says instead. You, who occupied my mind.  
  
It seems to shake him.  
  
****  
  
She hasn't worked since waking up from limbo, but she is translating, filtering stories through a new language. It is a task she's better at now than she has ever been. She loses track of time, though—also something she is better at now than before—and asks Dom to pick up Philippa from school.  
  
When she gets home, she finds Dom with their children in the yard. James sleeping in a patch of sunlight. The boy likes to sleep.  
  
Dom is sitting on the stairs of their deck, leaning over Philippa who is standing on the ground below him, elbows braced in his lap. She's communicating something to him gravely, a bird's nest in her hand. She finishes her sentence, looking up at him expectantly, but he shakes his head, tilts an ear closer to her mouth. "I'm sorry, chick," he says. "Tell me one more time."  
  
Philippa clucks her tongue at him angrily, pushes away and goes spinning off into the yard, a pinwheel of a girl.  
  
"Thank you for picking her up," Mal says. "I know it was last minute."  
  
Dom turns toward her voice, plants one strong hand on the wood of the deck. "No problem," he says. He gestures toward their daughter, the corners of his mouth turned up. "She gets so upset with me when I don't understand what she's saying on the first try."  
  
"She expects you to know her mind," Mal says. "She'll grow out of it."  
  
"You think so?"  
  
Mal laughs, puts a little more thought into it. "No.” She tilts her head. “Nobody I know has grown out of hoping, at least, for one person who will always know."  
  
The sun is setting. Its long planes of light retreating, leaving James half in shadow.  
  
Dom says, "I think you're angry sometimes. That I wanted to wake up. Maybe you think you weren't enough for me, in the end. But—" He smiles, and it's terrible in its softness. "I had selfish reasons, too, for wanting to wake. I was beginning to think you were a product of my mind. A fantasy. You were too much to be true. I needed to know that you were real, and that you had chosen me."  
  
Mal reads his unhappy face. The tenderness written over his lips. "Your love did not invent me," she says. "I'm not punishing you," she tells him.  
  
She could place a kiss, there on his mouth. Two over his eyes. If only her feet would move.  
  
****  
  
She'd met Kit's brother, several times, while sharing Kit's dreams.  
  
Tall, athletic. She didn't notice the resemblance to Arthur until he smiled, and then she saw that the dimples were very much of the same mold.  
  
"Brad," he had said, holding out a hand for her to shake. "I've heard so much about you."  
  
He said it so confidently. As if there was no doubt that it was true. As if he had not died, years ago, and is forever twenty-six.  
  
"Mallorie," she says to the mirror. "Mallorie Cobb." I lived years, years, she tells herself, before I knew Dom. Once this surname was foreign.  
  
****  
  
She calls Arthur, but he doesn't answer his phone. Dom has been at home for a few days, which means his involvement in Arthur’s current job is over, and Arthur is probably in Taipei, or Antananarivo, or Bandar Seri Begawan.

  
On Saturday, Dom takes Philippa and James to a baseball game. Laure has flown home for a week, to put some affairs in order before she returns. "I need to be with you for now," she says to Mal, when Mal tries to convince her to stay in Lyon.  
  
Mal shops for spaghetti, makes meatballs from turkey and lamb—her family's favorite meal neatly dovetailing with the one thing she knows best how to cook. She's just set the tomato sauce simmering on the stove when the doorbell chimes.  
  
It's Arthur. "You rang?" he says.  
  
"What are you doing here?" Mal asks.  
  
"Your Arthur has responded to your summons."  
  
"My Arthur," Mal says, rolling her eyes. "You're Dom's Arthur now."  
  
Arthur slides his hands into his pockets. "You haven't asked for me in a very long time," he says.  
  
****  
  
"Stay for dinner," she tells him. She sets an extra plate, then sits across from him, watches as he turns up his sleeves, folding the cuffs back meticulously. When he's done, he looks up at her, and his face turns sheepish at her amusement. "Very presentable, Arthur," she says.  
  
"Bite me," he says, and she laughs.  
  
"And how was Beirut?" she asks. "Tell me everything you're allowed."  
  
"I wasn't in Beirut."  
  
"Just guessing," Mal says. "Where were you then? Bruges? Seogwipo? Caracas?"  
  
"Boise," Arthur says.  
  
"Wonderful," Mal breathes.  
  
Arthur laughs. He hesitates before saying, "You know, you could—I've wanted to ask you for the longest time if you wanted some work."  
  
"I'm done with dream-sharing," Mal says instinctively.  
  
"It's rewarding. Not in every way, but—" He leans back in his chair. "Even you would find it challenging."  
  
"Is this your soft sell?" Mal asks, her chin on her hand. She's missed Arthur. The satisfaction that burns in his eyes when he's allowed to demonstrate his competence.  
  
"You were fantastic," Arthur says. He drops all pretense of nonchalance. "A session or two, tops, to get you up to speed, to put a gun in your hand, and you would be outpacing me by day four."  
  
"And you are the very best."  
  
Arthur smirks. "Remember who taught me the basics, back in the day. The foundation upon which my reputation now stands."  
  
Mal looks down at the table. She fingers the mismatched silverware. "Do you ever think of Kit?" she asks.  
  
She doesn't need to look up to know he shutters. "No," he lies, smoothly.  
  
****  
  
Arthur relaxes when Dom and the children come home, and it's only when she watches it happen—visible in his posture, in the sudden settling of his tapping fingers—that she realizes he was nervous with her.  
  
He's really gotten very good.  
  
"Arthur," Dom says, surprised. "What are you doing here?"  
  
"I'm trying to talk Mal into running away with me," Arthur says. "Of course."  
  
"It's not going very well," Mal says. She hugs James hello, kisses Philippa's cheek. She gets to her knees, taking a critical eye to her children's faces. "I think my rabbits have grown a little red from the sun."  
  
James beams at her. "I ate a hot dog," he says.  
  
"Lucky you," Mal says. She kisses him, too, at the corner of his pink mouth.  
  
"Did I really burn, mommy?" Philippa asks.  
  
"A little toasted, maybe," Mal says. "But I can fix that after dinner. Go wash up."  
  
"We're having spaghetti," Arthur says. The children peer shyly at him, and Arthur shuffles his feet, submitting himself for inspection.  
  
"You remember Uncle Arthur, don't you?" Dom says to the children.  
  
"Bonsoir, Philippa," Arthur says solemnly. "Hello, James."  
  
James curls a small fist in Mal's shirt, and Philippa bumps her hip against Mal's body, turning in toward her warmth. Philippa smiles shyly at Arthur, then whispers to Mal, "Mommy, can I wash my hands now?"  
  
"Of course, sweet." She picks James up, takes Philippa's hand, allows her daughter to tug her away.  
  
"I'm sorry," she hears Dom say. "They've had a long day."  
  
"God, they've gotten so big," Arthur says.  
  
"Give them some time to warm up to you," Dom says.  
  
"I honestly don't think I'd have recognized them if I passed them on the street."  
  
It jolts her. She squeezes Philippa's hand, memorizes the shape of it in hers, the little scar that runs along Philippa's index finger from where she was bitten by a neighbor's dog. She calls up the exact shade of James' hair, that sunny blond, and matches it to the boy in her arms.  
  
"Mommy," Philippa says. She twists out of Mal's grip. "Your hand is sweaty."  
  
****  
  
Dom puts the children to bed after spaghetti, after Mal brings them tall cups filled to the brim with little scoops of ice cream, and long-stemmed spoons.  
  
"What a day for you," Arthur had said to them, and James just nodded in agreement. Philippa leaned her head against Mal's hip, looked up at her, communicating in silence, until Mal laughed and went to bring another spoon for Arthur.  
  
They ask for Dom tonight, like they have for many nights. She nurtures a small jealousy in her heart.  
  
When she comes back to the kitchen after saying good night, Arthur has already cleared the table, stacked dishes neatly in the sink. His sleeves are pushed further up his arms, messily, water steaming from the faucet.  
  
Mal takes her time, putting away leftovers. Replacing ice cream lids and portioning away pasta.  
  
"You seem better," Arthur says.  
  
"Do I?" She laughs and wonders, idly, who had bought butter pecan ice cream. Why anyone would buy such a flavor.  
  
"Are you?" he asks.  
  
Mal opens the refrigerator. She stares at the jam-packed contents, a Tupperware in her hand. There's no place for it. She narrows her eyes. "I'm myself again," she says, a bit sing-song.  
  
"Clearly," Arthur says, with that tone in which the listener can hear whatever they like: sincerity, sarcasm, anything in between.  
  
She hears something new. _How you've changed_ , she thinks. _How different this world is from what it was yesterday._ Heady with uncertainty, she swings the refrigerator door closed, drops the Tupperware onto the floor.  
  
She looks at Arthur's back. The lissome strength of his shoulders, his narrow waist, the proportions of him accentuated by the black back of his vest.  
  
She goes to him and slides her arms around that waist. She sinks her face into his neck, turns up and kisses his jaw. She can feel it, ticcing.  
  
"Stop," he says.  
  
She takes her lips from his skin, her embrace growing friendly. She props her chin on his shoulder.  
  
"You're mocking me," he says.  
  
It wasn't a joke, exactly. She colors. "No."  
  
"I don't understand." He keeps his voice lowered. "Why did you do that?"  
  
 _Because_ , she thinks. _You haven't moved away. Because here you are, still leaning back into me. Because your fingers are almost familiar, and there are soap bubbles disappearing into thin air on the backs of your hands._ "God," she says, pulling away. She fidgets with the pockets of her jeans. "This night has taken such a turn for the strange."  
  
****  
  
They move to the living room, where Dom joins them after the children have fallen asleep. "Look at you," she says to Dom.  
  
"Why?" he asks, settling next to her. He pushes up, under her arm, resting his head on her shoulder.  
  
"You look at ease," Arthur says to Dom. "It's startling." He's taken up residence in the armchair across from the sofa she shares with Dom. It's not comfortable, she knows. The cushions are too firm.  
  
"Well, my kids are sound asleep, with full stomachs. My wife’s indulging my desire for her proximity, and my best friend has decided to stay despite the time for what will be, I'm sure, hours of stimulating conversation."  
  
"You have to pick one," Mal chides. "A single hour of stimulating conversation or many of inanity."  
  
"Greedy," Arthur says.  
  
Dom smiles. He turns his face into her body, breathes deep. He looks up, and his expression sends a flood of feeling through Mal's insides. "Thank you for dinner," he says.  
  
She feels entirely loved, and guilt, like a leavened dough, rises in the warmth.  
  
"Maybe I should go," Arthur says. "It's getting late."  
  
"No," Dom says. "Stay a little while longer. I never get to see you in my house."  
  
"What you don't know is that I'm here all the time," Arthur tries to joke, but it comes out feeble.  
  
"Yes, Arthur," Mal says. "Stay."  
  
He looks up at that. He's too collected to start, but his eyes hold hers for just a second, before they slip away, to the neutral space somewhere above her head. "Ten minutes," he says.  
  
She wants to tell him to relax. That she won't tell Dom until after Arthur has left. That Dom tonight is too glad, too secure to ruin. Let him have another hour.  
  
"Did you hear," she says. "The Yo Gabba Gabba tour will be in town next month."  
  
"I hadn't heard," Arthur says.  
  
"Everyone's talking about it," Dom says.  
  
"Everyone with any cachet, anyway," Mal says.  
  
" _Oh_ , Yo Gabba Gabba," Arthur says. "I thought you said something sensible. Of course, I remember hearing about that now." He keeps his face so straight. No sign of a smile, smartly brushing a piece of imagined-lint off his knee. He raises an eyebrow. "What is that? I picture rapping toads."  
  
Dom laughs. He's so happy.  
  
****  
  
They've drifted deep into the night by the time Arthur leaves. Her body operating without the aid of her mind, all slow, floating movements enacted by muscle memory. Dom dozes for minutes, here and there, wakes up silently, absorbing the conversation before making only a vaguely related comment and falling back asleep.  
  
"I should go," Arthur says.  
  
Mal touches Dom's face. "Dom," she says. "Arthur is going."  
  
He blinks. _His eyes_ , she thinks. "I'm up," he says.  
  
She smoothes his eyebrows. "Can I talk to Arthur for a moment, just he and I?"  
  
Dom sits up. He stares at the floor, extricating himself from sleep. "Yes, of course. I'll—I don't know. I'll get some water."  
  
Arthur stands when Dom stands. His jacket over his arm.  
  
Mal goes to Arthur, adjusts his tie. He watches her do it, as stiff and wary as she's ever seen him. Her heart a little gasp of sadness. "I'm sorry, Arthur," she says.  
  
"Okay," he says.  
  
She looks at him, her hands dropping to her sides.  
  
He lets out a short sigh, glances back toward the door Dom had disappeared through. "I'm not angry. I know it seems that way, but—" he says. "I'm lost."  
  
"Fair," she says.  
  
He softens, touches her elbow. "Dom's still worried about you, you know. You haven't been the same since your time together in Limbo."  
  
"Limbo," Mal says. "It's such a ridiculous-sounding word."  
  
"You should talk to him. He's not the same either."  
  
"Yes, Arthur," she says, appeasingly.  
  
He rolls his eyes. "A wolf in sheep's clothing is what you are right now."  
  
She laughs, quietly, and he turns to collect his shoes, abandoned somewhere near the door. Padding along in forest green socks, and it moves her, the sight of them—their grey toes, the little hole over his ankle.  
  
He pulls Alden derbies over his feet, the leather gleaming softly. She and Dom had had them restored for Arthur on his birthday. "They'll last you a lifetime," Dom had said, an arm around her waist.  
  
Arthur ties his laces. "I think of Kit a lot," he says, suddenly. "More, lately." He hides his face from her. "I should have been better prepared, for her. I could have been honest about how much I admired her. How I missed her when she was away. I should have known how much she would weigh on my mind and my heart, and done much more and much better."  
  
"Arthur," she says.  
  
He looks up, still and grave. "And you?" he asks. "Are you very much of her same mold?"  
  
"No," Dom says before she can answer, and Mal turns to see him standing there in the doorway. The vision of him swimming, and made small by the tears she finds are filling her eyes.  
  
****  
  
Here is a truth Mal is ashamed of:  
  
No. It's too terrible to say.  
  
****  
  
Her father had been the rare academic whose passion had sincerely lain in teaching, rather than the research, the glory that came with breaking discoveries and trumpeted publications. She supposes, though, that the interdisciplinary nature of what he called the Creation project made up for the time he spent away from his students.  
  
When she was a senior, soon-to-be accepting her undergraduate degree, Miles had asked her, "And now what? Will you continue to ascend the white tower of academia? Or has the world of regular hours and a competitive salary beckoned?"  
  
"I'm not sure," she'd said.  
  
"What do you want to do with your life, my girl?" He'd persevered, despite her obvious discomfort. "It's my duty as your father to ask you these questions."  
  
"I want to solve problems," she'd said.  
  
"Which? What kind?"  
  
"All of them," and she'd smiled, expansive, over at him.  
  
****  
  
She asks Dominic to come with her to take Philippa to school and James to day care. He doesn't look surprised. He just comes.  
  
She kisses their dear faces. She wipes a smudge of dirt that had already found its way onto James' cheek. As Dom pulls out of the parking lot, she says, "I have something to tell you."  
  
He waits. She's twisting the fabric of her skirt in her hands, and Dom puts one of his over hers, stilling them.  
  
"I kissed Arthur last night."  
  
His grip tightens for a moment. He turns the steering wheel in a smooth motion with the palm of one hand, pulls over onto a side street—Willow Glen, she notes, the name of the neighborhood seeming very important—and Mal feels sick. "Why?" he asks.  
  
"I don't know," she says.  
  
"I need you to know." His voice grim.  
  
She tears her hands from his. She looks out the window. "I love you, you know. Only you."  
  
He gets out of the car and the slam of the door closing jolts her. She's shaking.  
  
He comes around to her side of the car. He opens the door. He cups her face with his big hands and kisses her. "I love you," he says, fiercely. "Tell me why. Be honest. More than anything, honest." His heated hands, his brows set in a straight line.  
  
"Oh god," she says. The sky is a brilliant blue, the far away hills a remarkable, enhanced green. It—it isn't right, and she clutches at Dom, tries to stand, tries to move. "We have to wake up," she says. --I have to wake up. My god, my life.  
  
Her French slipping away from her memory like a language she had lost long ago.  
  
"We're awake, Mallorie." Dom is breathing her air.  
  
"We're not." She closes her eyes to force away the constructed world she faces, the dizziness of it. She can hear him, reaching into his pocket, taking out the scrimshaw lighter there, imagine the exact angle he holds it at. Lid clinking open, and then the flint striking, once, twice, the quiet hiss of flame.  
  
"It caught," he says, as if it was proof. As if his totem could know better than she did.  
  
"I'm not sure of anything anymore," she says, an admission pulled out of her throat, piece by piece.  
  
"Be sure of me." His lips. His lashes. The touch of them a thing she knows with more certainty than she has of the existence of the moon, its craters never a comfort.  
  
****  
  
She had found Kit, deep, deep, in a crevice of a hole down to the center of the earth. A shaft of light reaching down to illuminate her in its one particular way.  
  
"Aren't you lonely?" Mal had asked, to this old woman with straight eyebrows. A familiar shape to her nose.  
  
"I know you," Kit had said.  
  
They climbed a kick up to the third level of Kit’s consciousness, where they found water and sand that turned to rock. A steep slope, and at the top a green meadow, with a tent of netting. "You look so young," Kit had said.  
  
The second, through a door onto a roof, overlooking a city of neon and steel. "Mal. Where are you taking me?"  
  
The first, laughing. "Never doubt the mind's capacity for self-deception." Kit looked around, at the intimate red velvet of the booths of a steakhouse. Her brother's wallet on the table, his keys, a half-dollar. She put it up on its edge, sent it spinning, watched it turn for second upon second. She smiled, looking at Mal. "It should fall, shouldn't it?" Then stood up, went running for the door, toward a cliff, her limbs pumping, ready to take flight. She called over her shoulder, to Mal, "And you're sure the next one is the last? The real, true one?"  
  
The entire time, a distraction in the dream. An almost presence in the breath of the wind, in the step of her feet, in the taste of the air in her mouth. It switches her survival instincts on, every one, burst after burst of crackling fire.  
  
"We'll see," Mal said. "Now jump."  
  
They woke up in a hospital, and Mal felt her husband's touch on her stomach. Too distracted to really note the way Kit looked at her own hands, as if they were alien objects. When Kit locked herself behind the door, Mal was furious, and terrified. A panic rising.  
  
"Say what you want to say," Kit had said.  
  
\--This world is yours. Your dream to manipulate, Mal said, desperate to convince her. --Your projections, coming to expel us. To tear at Arthur again. Could you watch all of us die? Is this the end you want to witness? I won't come back. I won't share your dreams anymore, I swear upon every life. This is how you'll say good-bye? Turn them back. Come out, and turn your projections back.  
  
But still the sound of marching boots.  
  
****  
  
"Tell me again," he says, days later. His brow furrowed, as if ready to reason.  
  
"I've submitted already to a written exam," Mal says, smiling half-heartedly. "Yet still more tests?"  
  
"This isn't a test," Dom says. "Please, tell me again."  
  
Mal leans toward him, in the booth of their favorite restaurant. She holds Dom's hand. "You look at me like you think I'm crazy."  
  
"Aren't you?"  
  
"Dom!"  
  
He laughs, shaky, and Mal smiles, too. A pinprick of light.  
  
"I'm beginning to wonder about other possibilities," she says.  
  
"You don't think that you and I woke up to a dream within a dream?"  
  
"I still support that theory," Mal says. "I'm in its corner."  
  
He nods. "I like when you use sports metaphors."  
  
She pinches the inside of his elbow, rolls her eyes at the injured face he makes at her. "Take me seriously," she says.  
  
He sobers, so fast it's startling. "I've always. I will always."  
  
She can feel herself blushing. The heat down her collar. She takes a long drink of water, looks away, touching the back of her neck. "Dominic. What if I never woke up from the first time that I went down, the time I went to find Kit? What if I'm still lying in some Pentagon facility and you are being forced to do terrible things, or are on the run, or in jail, and the whole time, my stomach swelling? What if Philippa is yet to be born?"  
  
"Mallorie." He struggles; she can see him holding back expletives, the strain around his mouth. She's glad. Every 'fuck', 'shit', 'goddamnit' a hard jar to her nerves. "That's a lot of what-if's," he says.  
  
She lets go of his hand.  
  
"And what about me?" Dom asks. Staring into the little candle flickering on their table. "The me here across from you."  
  
Mal straightens her silverware, in motions unshaken and graceful. "It's romantic, isn't it?" she asks lightly. "To say you are too good to be true."  
  
A smile at his lips, a touch of bitter. "So it's me, this time, who might be your creation."  
  
She laughs. "Turnabout."  
  
"Mallorie—" He stops.  
  
Mal is cold. She wishes for his jacket, draped over her shoulders.  
  
Dom picks up the glassed candle. He turns it in his palms, the flame sputtering. "Sometimes I think about what I would have done, if you had asked me to stay in our dream together. If you had asked me to love you enough to forget all my doubts."  
  
"And?" Mal asks.  
  
He sets the little light down. He grips her hand, his palm too-hot. "I would have said yes. If you’d asked." He blows the candle out.  
  
She is greedy of him, she realizes. So greedy she questions her goodness. "Dominic. Please understand. _Please_. One way or another, this world is false."  
  
"Let me ask you something," he says.  
  
****  
  
\--I'd like to take a trip," she tells her mother over the weekend as they drive home from the community plot her mother has begun to work. --But Dominic won't leave the children."  
  
\--I'll stay with them. Let him know they'll be well cared for.  
  
Mal traces a pattern on the car window. --It'll be harder than that, she says. --He's too much of a father to decide to be away from them.  
  
\--And you are too much of a mother, Laure says.  
  
Mal rolls down the window. The breeze stealing the air from her lungs. --Yes, she says. --Too much to be away for long.  
  
 _It’s surprising_ , she thinks. How little she has cried. Just the undercurrent, ready to swallow her up.  
  
****  
  
They fight, many times, and it's only now, when she has reached a depth of despair at his lack of faith that things have escalated.  
  
"Please," Dom says. "Mallorie, please. Our children are real. How could you doubt them?" He's anguished.  
  
"Dominic," she says. "We can't be chained here. You must be an actual father. I love them, too, believe me, but we're only practicing here." Her heart run through a shredder, divided into this, which she will keep, and that, which she cannot.  
  
"Don't do this. Don’t leave me here without you," Dominic says. "Put the knife down."  
  
"You don’t have to be scared," she says. “This is the only way.”  
  
She hears the unlocking of the door. The turning of the knob, and then voices: her mother, whose flight was to land later this afternoon. The sound of her children, chattering to their grandmother. It's too late to hide the knife, but she turns, quickly, lets it hang loose at her side, and she can see Dom, in the sheen of the refrigerator, falling back against the counter, shoulders collapsing.  
  
"Mommy," Philippa says.  
  
"I arrived early," her mother says. "And thought I'd pick up the children on my way home."  
  
"We rode in a taxi," James says.  
  
Philippa has gone silent. Ever the most attenuated to Mal's mood.  
  
Laure pauses. She puts a hand against the side of the refrigerator, taking measure of the room. “What's wrong?"  
  
Dom lifts his head. "Nothing," he says. "Everything is fine." He claps his hands. "Come on, kids. Let's get your shoes off." He leads James away. "Philippa," he says.  
  
Her mother looks troubled. Her hair swept back with a scarf, gray where her roots are showing. "Mallorie," she says. "Why are you holding a knife?"  
  
Mal can only watch the door through which her children had went. She can't stand to look at them. She cannot stand to see them gone.  
  
Her mother comes close to her. She takes the knife from Mal's rigid grasp.  
  
"You aren't real, Maman," Mallorie says. --I like to imagine you're this gentle, maybe.  
  
Laure's mouth goes rigid. She points. "You are a stronger woman than this, Mallorie." Her English hard.  
  
"None of this is real," Mallorie says. It's the simplest way she can state it.  
  
"Why are you so certain?"  
  
Mallorie, she counts the tile on the floor. A rebellion in her mind, a little coup. "I just know. I know."  
  
Her mother sighs. She slides the knife back into the butcher block. "Be resolute," she says. "You are a person who needs no luck. Too passionate to wear this world like a loose garment."  
  
 _You don't understand_ , Mal thinks. She remembers the look on Philippa's face. The way the little girl's glance had bounced off the knife, repelled by its magnetic force.  
  
This cannot be my life.  
  
****  
  
She dreams of Kit. This woman, her friend, whom she had known for less than a year, who had cut words into an untouched expanse, there, in her heart. "Some people," Kit had said, "You know were meant for you."  
  
They're sitting in a church. The stained glass windows turning white light into so many shards of color. "I never forgave you," Mal says.  
  
Kit squeezes her hand. "You should run,” she says.  
  
The sound of many boots whittles down behind Mal as she sprints, until there is only the slap of two, a man, dogged. Inexorable.  
  
She is half over a wall, her feet in the air, when a hand closes around her ankle, and she screams. She calls on a god.  
  
Yanked back, dragged over exposed brick, until she is clamped between someone's arms, her name being shouted in an increasingly familiar voice. "Mallorie!"  
  
She opens her eyes to see Dom. His face is different. Younger, and smooth. Lines from when he smiles pale against his deep tan.  
  
He's frowning. He brushes the curls away from her forehead, holds them in place with gentled hands. "You're sleeping," he says. "I’ve been waiting for you for so long. Please," he says, begging. He laughs, a little, through his tears. "I need you."  
  
She wakes, gasping, in the hotel room she had reserved for their anniversary. She fumbles for the lamp but knocks it onto the floor instead: the satisfying crack of it, the porcelain splinters.  
  
One must always have a plan in place.  
  
****  
  
The first thing, the very first thing he says to her when he finds her outside along the ledge is this: "You look cold."  
  
He might be a projection—a pale imitation of the man she knows and loves—but he is still an imitation who asks her to put on a coat. Who looks at her with a love just this side of reverent.  
  
 _Will he love me so much when I wake. Will it have faded._  
  
She cannot risk leaving him behind. “Join me,” she says.  
  
****  
  
People say that time slows down when you are faced with death. In the immediacy of a threat to your life, the seconds tick by slower, like a mercy extended.  
  
It's a nice thought. Instead, what happens is that your mind, usually discerning in what it chooses to record into the bank of your life, blows open.  
  
It's something Mal remembers, falling.  
  
Dom believed that she was absolutely certain in her conviction. It's true—she was certain enough to plan, and, in the end, enough to jump—but it didn't mean she had not the slightest of doubts.  
  
 _To those I am leaving behind_ , she thinks, unhurried. If my death is truly a death. To the people I pray are waiting for me when I wake:  
  
For Maman, who taught her daughters to shrug away what does not fit;  
  
For James, who is young and will lack for nothing;  
  
For Arthur, who deserves to know why:  
  
For Dominic, who is not following me down. Who is beautiful, and right in his intentions. Whose good morning I will hear, at any cost;  
  
And for Philippa, whom Mal had climbed into bed with the night before.  
  
She went from sleeping to awake in the blink of an eye when Mal pulled her close, and whispered her name. "Did you know," Mal said. "That from the very second you were born, I loved the presence of you. Before then, even. You are the best daughter. Already you are kind, and generous, and strong. You see everything, and that takes courage, to keep your eyes open so."  
  
Philippa had only listened, all sleepy warmth. A clear-eyed gaze. Her little hand on Mal's collarbone.  
  
"I admire you very much," Mal said. She blinked away tears. "And someday—someday, you may discover that the things you carry, the person you have become is not quite enough. That you are not infinitely capable. And then you will have to be discerning, and brave, to face those demands you may not be able to meet. To take the action you can." She kissed her daughter, words torn from a dark, damp place. "Be very, very brave.”  
  
\--My little girl.  
  
Mal flies. She waits, to break awake. There is only a little fear, and even that she tramples underfoot.


	3. Coda

> _Oh, to be loved is nothing. To be preferred is what I desire._
> 
> __Andre Gide

  
  
Arthur had planned for a quiet day. After the Fischer job, there had been three others in quick succession, and Arthur is, in every meaning of the word, wearied. Time he allows himself to spend at his leisure is rare, and when he gets 24 hours with which to do what he likes, he makes sure to put a guard around it.  
  
Today, no one will fall asleep at the watch stations.  
  
He will do his laundry, this morning. There are machines in his building, a laundry service he could put to use, but he likes the idea of going down to the coin-op near Dolores Park with quarters jingling in his pocket. It shouldn't be too bad. He has very few clothes that are anything but dry-clean only.  
  
He carries his hamper down the stairs, puts his back to the door and pushes his way outside. He has a sweater on, something someone had bought him, once, in Monaco, to keep him warm. The streets are heavy with a fog but the sun's there, too, at the horizon, burning in its eastern post.  
  
****  
  
He separates his whites from his darks from his colors. He tries to decide whether he should wait at the café next door; he might have enough time to walk down to Ritual Coffee and get through the line.  
  
"Excuse me," a girl says. "I'm sorry, please, to bother you, but I forgot soap. Would it be okay?" she asks, pointing hesitantly toward Arthur's detergents.  
  
"Of course," Arthur says. "You'll probably want the standard." He stops himself from examining her laundry too closely. "Or I do have color guard. And extra dark care."  
  
She looks at him, smiling a little. "I think—the normal one?"  
  
He laughs, ducks his head. "Sure."  
  
They're the only two people here. She's lovely, with dark red hair, and he can see, from the corner of his eye, the way the fine hair on her arms glows, lining her in sunlight.  
  
He closes three washer doors.  
  
"It's beautiful today, isn't it?" she says.  
  
He nods his agreement. He leans against a machine, slides his hands into his pockets. "Where are you from?" he asks.  
  
"Venezuela," she says.  
  
"I lived in Maracaibo, for a few years," Arthur says.  
  
"Si?" she asks. She turns to face him, a skirt in her hands. "Studying?"  
  
"Something like that." He smiles. "I could tell you more over coffee."  
  
She laughs, white teeth flashing, then raises her hand and wiggles a ring at him.  
  
He shrugs, smiles back. "This doesn't have to be awkward," he says.  
  
****  
  
His phone rings as he's walking out of Ritual, black coffee in hand. He fumbles for it in his back pocket, puts it to his ear without checking to see who it is. "Arthur," he answers.  
  
"Christ," Dom says. "You know this is the sixth number I called trying to get a hold of you?"  
  
"I took the day off," Arthur says.  
  
"Yeah," Dom says. He huffs. "Well, you answered this one at least."  
  
"It is my personal line," Arthur says, sipping. He can feel the warmth of it, sliding through his body. "You could have started with this one."  
  
"You have too many numbers," Dom says. "I'm surprised I’d have to explain the advantages of streamlining to you."  
  
Arthur ignores that. "Was there something specific you wanted to discuss, Dom?" he asks. He might as well offer the pretense of not knowing why Dom has called, today, in case Dom wants it.  
  
"Fuck if I know," Dom says. He lets out a heavy sigh. "Just—stay on the phone and let me listen to you breathe."  
  
"My God," Arthur says; but he smiles, listening to Dom laugh. "You sound good.”  
  
"Oh, yeah?" Dom asks.  
  
****  
  
Everyone is dressed in short shorts, and tank tops, short-sleeved shirts with a minimum of three buttons undone. The whole of the city basking in a rare instance of sun.  
  
Arthur stands in the window of the laundromat. The skin of his arm closest to the glass warmed through. He shakes out his clothes, folds them in neat, efficient movements. He glances at a man walking past, his strong thighs, follows him with his eyes.  
  
There's a knock at the glass, right behind his head. When Arthur turns, Eames raises his eyebrow, tilts his head in the direction of the guy Arthur had been watching. "He does have a particularly well-formed arse," he says, loudly from outside.  
  
Arthur ignores him. He waits until Eames makes his way to just outside the door before demanding, "What are you doing here?"  
  
"In San Francisco? I have business."  
  
"How did you find me?"  
  
"Coincidence." Eames shrugs, and he seems genuinely pleased, the way he often does when caught flat-footed by an unexpected turn of events.  
  
Still. Arthur narrows his eyes.  
  
"Your skepticism is duly noted, Arthur. Shall I come inside?"  
  
****  
  
They've never really interacted outside of work. While on a job, there have been drinks had, personal details exchanged, even fights that escalated into something intimate in their level of anger, but Eames had always been firmly ensconced outside of Arthur's personal life.  
  
It's strange that Eames is ambling alongside him now, in jeans, following Arthur home.  
  
When they get to Arthur's building, Eames takes a seat on the stairs leading up to Arthur's door. "Run along and put your clothes away, then let's eat. I could do damage to several plates of food."  
  
"I can't," Arthur says. "I have plans."  
  
"We'll meet up after, then," Eames says, standing up.  
  
"Why?"  
  
"You're the only person I know in this particular city," Eames says, easy. He shades his eyes with his hand. "You seem confused."  
  
"I'm not sure if we're friends," Arthur says honestly.  
  
"Ah," says Eames. "Well, this is the first test."  
  
****  
  
Arthur really does have plans, and Eames puts up his hands, leaves a number to reach him at. "I'll be crushed if you don't call," he says.  
  
"You won't," Arthur says.  
  
"I won't," Eames agrees. "But still. Call, love."  
  
****  
  
He takes BART to Berkeley. His cousin had started there last year, but Arthur, for one reason or another, has yet to drop by. He wants to see how Nicholas might be settling into his new life. It’s about time.  
  
Nick's waiting outside the station. He grins when he sees Arthur, and Arthur only just recognizes him.  
  
"Jesus, Nicky," Arthur says. "Look at you."  
  
"I think I'm taller than you," Nick says. His smile is sly.  
  
Arthur rolls his eyes. He hugs Nick hard. "What are you, an athlete?"  
  
"I'm wrestling."  
  
"Jesus," Arthur says again. He takes in the sight of Nick: still the same easy posture the kid had adopted in junior high. The birth mark on his left ear. "Let's put some food in you."  
  
"What do you want to eat?" Nick asks.  
  
"Up to you."  
  
"You're paying, right?"  
  
"Good move," Arthur says. "I'm paying. Feel free to adjust that price point up by fifteen dollars."  
  
Nick laughs. "Hey, you're dressed pretty snazzy. I want to pick surroundings that live up to that standard."  
  
"Maybe French food, today." Arthur thinks it appropriate.  
  
"Arthur," Nick says. He swings an arm around Arthur's shoulders. "You should visit me more often."  
  
****  
  
They eat at a nice place. Nick is in flip-flops and a Cal t-shirt, but the hostess doesn't bat an eye, seats them near a window.  
  
"Our dads are building a boat," Nick says, through a mouthful of mussels. "Did you know that?"  
  
"With the purpose of actually being put in water?" Arthur asks.  
  
"Yeah! Can you believe that? Mom says Uncle T's ripped off at least three fingernails."  
  
"Christ," Arthur says.  
  
Nick lets out a contented sigh, sits back in his seat, his hands over his stomach. He smiles at Arthur. "I'm supposed to ask you if you've talked to Reuben, at all."  
  
"How is he?" Arthur asks. He picks at his steak au poivre. He hasn't seen his brother since God knows when.  
  
Nick shrugs. "Better. His parole officer's said good things. Or so I hear."  
  
Arthur smiles thinly. "All my fingers are crossed."  
  
"I'm sorry," Nick says. "I know it's a weird—I promised to ask you, is all."  
  
"It's fine."  
  
"Hey," Nick says. He leans forward. "Remember that time we went camping, when you were like, sixteen, or something? Remember how I saw that crawfish in the river and you just flipped your hat off your head and swooped it up out of the water?" He whistles.  
  
Arthur laughs. "You asked me to be your godfather."  
  
"Fuck, that was cool," Nick says.  
  
****  
  
"I don't know," Nick says.  
  
They're walking through campus. Green, rolling hills, wide-paved walkways. Booths, and banners in blue and gold. Tall, scuffed buildings, and so many kids, with backpacks and books, and places to be. Arthur thinks of Ariadne. If she’s well. How long it will be before she comes looking for Dom.  
  
Nick reclaims his attention. "We've really only been dating for a few months. It's kind of fucked up, but I don't think I would have asked her out if I knew she had this whole thing with food."  
  
"Is she anorexic?" Arthur asks.  
  
"No, not really." Nick thinks. "Maybe. Her best friend keeps saying we should call her parents."  
  
"You should talk to her."  
  
"I don't think that telling her how bad it is would really help, though. It’s something in her head. I think she has to want it to change."  
  
Arthur looks down at the ground. Puts one foot in front of the other. "Right. But you never know. You might say something that helps her towards that. You should try at least. What’s the alternative?"  
  
"I could wait for her to snap out of it," Nick says, joking. He shrugs, batting at a low-hanging branch in their path. “No, I know you’re right.” He groans, then. "At least that way I'll know I did everything I could."  
  
"Come on, Nick." Arthur frowns at a scuff on his shoe. "It's not about fulfilling an obligation, is it? Is that who you are?"  
  
"Okay, okay," Nick says. They walk in silence for a little while longer, Nick picking up the pace, but then he leans over, bumps Arthur's shoulder. "I think you would like her. I mean, beyond the whole body dysmorphia she's got going on." He sighs. "Shit, I’m talking too much. I don't mean to joke about it, really."  
  
Arthur smiles over at his cousin. Shared flesh and blood. He thumps Nick on the back. "It's fine. I didn't mean to snap at you." He cranes his neck back, stretching out an ache. The sky is striated with clouds. Layers of blue and white. "I'm sorry you're having a hard time. I know—“ Arthur scratches at the bite of a bug over his chest. “It’s not easy being worried, either."  
  
****  
  
When they say goodbye, Nick says, "Hey, are you okay?"  
  
"What do you mean?"  
  
"You were just quieter than I remember you, today."  
  
Arthur grins. "I wanted to hear more from you, is all. It's been a long time."  
  
"No, I get that. You just felt real...I don't know. Sober."  
  
Arthur nods. He rubs his forehead. "It's just today." He meets Nick's eyes. "The sun's giving me a headache."  
  
****  
  
He lingers in Berkeley for a little while. He ducks into a couple of pawn shops, an antique store. The last time he'd been to Yusuf's storefront, he'd shattered a chest full of beakers, knocked an old cuckoo clock off the wall during a particularly imprecise knock-down drag-out.  
  
"I expect to collect on this debt," Yusuf had said, a finger jabbing into Arthur's chest. The clock cradled against him. “Or the next time we work together, I’ll have you dreaming in stop-motion.”  
  
A decent cuckoo clock, with a manageable level of kitsch is difficult to find. Arthur doesn't come across much in his search, and he goes into this last store to escape from the heat more than anything else. The interior is dark and shadowed, cool and dry as a cave. Arthur goes to the glass cases. He drags a finger through the dust. He draws an airplane, then a .45 ACP Luger, the sleek barrel.  
  
Something glimmers. A little clock on a necklace chain. An elephant encrusted in jewels there in the center of the face.  
  
"Excuse me," Arthur says. He looks toward the back of the store, straightening, his feet at shoulder-width apart. "Can somebody help me?"  
  
He wants to buy it. He doesn't know who he'll give it to. Maybe to Dom, to give to Philippa when she's older.  
  
****  
  
Dom calls just as Arthur gets on the train. "I'm going to cut out," Arthur says, picking up. "I'm on the train."  
  
"Hang on," Dom says. "I can't really hear you."  
  
"Did you know Eames is in San Francisco for a job?"  
  
"I should call you back,” Dom says.  
  
Arthur plugs his other ear. “I saw my cousin today,” he tells Dom.  
  
“Oh. Well, good.”  
  
“What I’m saying is, I have people here.” Arthur waits for a response through the static.  
  
****  
  
Arthur's climbing the stairs out of the station. A patch of blue sky lighting the way up out of the earth. He thinks about what he wants for dinner. He pictures eating alone, both in a restaurant and at home. Fuck it. It's Saturday night.  
  
He dials a number.  
  
"Eames."  
  
"I called," Arthur says.  
  
"You know," Eames says. "I think you might be beginning to appreciate me."  
  
“Finally,” Arthur says, pure sympathy.  
  
****  
  
They agree to meet in North Beach. The sun is setting, and dusk grows cool quickly. Eames is smoking, looking down the distance of a lamp-lit street. He's cut his hair.  
  
When he turns and sees Arthur, he grins. "Darling."  
  
Arthur can't help rolling his eyes at the greeting, but he nods back, motions for the cigarette. He takes a drag, then another before handing it back. “You’re wearing a tie,” he says, nodding at the orange silk around Eames’ neck.  
  
Eames pats at it. “A bit of fancy dress. I came as someone respectable. Do you approve of my four-in-hand?”  
  
Arthur smiles. “The Windsor has its place.” He shoves his hands into his pockets, protecting them from a kicking-up wind.  
  
"I must confess,” Eames says, “the thought did cross my mind that I would be standing here all night, waiting for you.”  
  
"Eames," Arthur says. "Why are you here?"  
  
Eames drops the cigarette butt, puts it out with his heel. He pulls his shoulders back, stretching. "Would it make you feel better," he asks, "to know that I am being handsomely rewarded for insinuating myself into your day?"  
  
"A little," Arthur says.  
  
"A-ha," Eames says.  
  
****  
  
Arthur walks from restaurant to restaurant, Eames stalking away behind him. "Are you ever going to make a decision?" Eames asks.  
  
"I really only wanted to eat at Tony's."  
  
"The wait was an hour and a half."  
  
"We could be sitting now if you'd let me put a name down," Arthur points out.  
  
"Jesus wept, Arthur."  
  
Arthur smirks to himself, hidden away in the dark. "On second thought, let's go back toward Chinatown. Maybe I want dumplings."  
  
"The satisfaction with which you torment me," Eames says, "is unkind."  
  
****  
  
They eat, finally, at a restaurant with fish tanks along the walls, cracked linoleum. The Formica tabletops are seafoam green.  
  
Eames points at an immense fish, too large to do anything more than roll over in its tank. "That one there," he says. "Bring it to me on a plate."  
  
****  
  
They go to a bar of Eames' choosing, afterward. It's grimy, but Arthur rolls up his sleeves, slams shots down onto the bar with the best of them. He's found himself in conversation with a forester, in San Francisco from Humboldt.  
  
"No," Arthur says, "I understand what you're saying, but longer rotations among the conifers would give the forest time to regenerate. And if you wait to harvest until 80 years of age, you'll get at least double the board feet every time you cut."  
  
Eames is slumped at Arthur's elbow, the side of his head pressed against Arthur's shoulder. "Your conversation is, somehow, both bizarre and mind-bendingly dull. It’s paradoxical."  
  
"Timber is one of my many long-term investments," Arthur says. "Redwoods, if one can afford to be patient, are worth the initial capital."  
  
"A constantly renewable resource, if managed correctly," the forester adds.  
  
"How many other things could you say that about?" Arthur asks. He might have had a little too much.  
  
"Easy does it, Arthur," Eames says. "We’re nearing soppiness."  
  
****  
  
They walk to the bus stop, passing a girl in blue lycra, and a pack of dudes in flip-flops, who reek of Acqua di Gio.  
  
"Ah, sophistication," Eames says.  
  
Arthur turns around, walking backwards.  
  
Eames looks a little above Arthur's stomach, at his solar plexus. As if determining Arthur's weaknesses. He walks, his hands clasped behind his back, his shoulders a curving bow, an unlit cigarette dangling from his mouth. He looks lost in thought.  
  
They go like that, for a bit. Arthur checking over his shoulder every minute, to make sure the path is clear.  
  
Eames opens his mouth. The cigarette sticking to his lip. "I'm fucking tossed," he says. His enunciation lazy.  
  
Arthur raises an eyebrow. "Are you?"  
  
Eames doesn't answer. Just tugs the cigarette away, smirking at it before tossing it to the ground.  
  
 _A waste_ , Arthur thinks.  
  
Eames looks up into Arthur's face this time, straightening. Shaking off the cloud of alcohol. "And what will you do, dear Arthur, if our friend Cobb makes good on his promise to retire?"  
  
"You think I'll be at a loss?" Arthur stops in the middle of the sidewalk. Hands in his pockets. The retail complex next to him dark, colors stripped of their neon glow.  
  
Eames studies him, standing there. Arthur has never shrunk from examination; he is confident of his strengths. His many failings too familiar to be shameful. Eames pulls up on his belt, then ambles to the rusting station wagon parked at the side of the street. He sits, making it sink onto its shocks. "You and Cobb are a package deal,” he says finally.  
  
Arthur nods. "But we weren't always." He shrugs. "Dom is used to being part of a creative pair. He's never operated at his best alone. He needs to be argued with, questioned, stimulated."  
  
Eames clicks his teeth together at the last.  
  
Arthur ignores him. "It's something Dom has come to depend on. So I played that role for a little while." He fingers the contents of his pockets. His phone, his wallet, the handmade Balisong knife that had served him for years, a dependable substitution when a more elegant weapon wasn’t at hand.  
  
"And did so brilliantly," Eames says, quiet.  
  
Arthur shakes his head. He runs his hand over his mouth, looking away. "Are we being kind to each other now?" Intended for sarcasm, but Arthur misses by inches.  
  
****  
  
Muni is crowded, and Arthur ends up standing next to Eames' seat, his shins against Eames' thighs.  
  
"You know the first thing you said to me," Eames starts, "was that you dislike forgers?"  
  
"Yes," Arthur says. "That sounds like me." His cheeks feel flushed. His mood suddenly buoyant and bobbing.  
  
"You never bothered to explain yourself."  
  
The bus hits a pothole, and Arthur stumbles back into someone, apologizes. He follows the thread back to the conversation he had been having with Eames. "I don't know." He watches the city flash by. He looks at the little boy sleeping in his mother's arms in the seat in front of Eames. "I like you. You seem comfortable in your skin. In other skins, too, but—I think you mostly like this world, and who you are in it." He nods to himself. “We’re different people, that's all.”  
  
“Not so different as to share zero commonalities,” Eames says. Arthur watches him wink at a woman across the aisle. “There is a satisfaction to be taken in a life lived competently, no? Isn’t that why you ask yourself ‘is this good enough, is this good enough’ incessantly while huddled over your schematics?”  
  
It startles a laugh out of Arthur, and Eames looks up at the sound, grins broadly. The bus creaks and sways. Arthur puts all his concentration into riding out the jolts, into letting his body move in inverse motion with feet firmly planted.  
  
"So all of what you said before,” Eames says. He strokes his lips with his thumb. “That makes me admirable?"  
  
"Quite a leap," Arthur says.  
  
****  
  
Eames challenges him to a race when they get off the bus. Arthur's neighborhood is quiet, buildings stacking up toward the sky at angles as the hill below them climbs. The slope steep.  
  
It's stupid, but today is a day where frivolity is allowed. Arthur flies, legs pumping, knees jack-knifing into the air. Eames cheats. He grabs at Arthur's clothes, pushes Arthur back when Eames catches a lead.  
  
Arthur just laughs. It's cold, but the fog has yet to descend, the stars still shining with their faraway and fading light.  
  
****  
  
Eames follows Arthur up to his apartment. Arthur lets him in, but he says, "You don’t need to babysit me through the night, Eames."  
  
"Reputations require cultivation. I am widely considered the best in my field. Do you know why?" Eames shrugs off his shirt, collapses onto Arthur's couch. "Past the absolute truth on the face of it, of course."  
  
"Your unrepentant boasting?" Arthur turns on the light in his kitchen, pours a tall glass of water.  
  
"Exclusivity, Arthur. At any moment there are multiple offers for my time." Eames closes his eyes. "All that to say: I take the jobs I prefer."  
  
Arthur knows there is nothing to read on his face. Not even the suggestion of a smile, not a token sign of the fact that, in this moment, he feels charitable toward the world. He runs a hand through his hair, sweat sticking it to his forehead. He forgot to put product in it this morning.  
  
Arthur goes to where Eames is lying. He kneels down next to him. Arthur touches his fingers to one of Eames' many tattoos, but Eames doesn't stir, his breathing still even, as if governed by unconscious impulse.  
  
"I know you're not sleeping," Arthur says.  
  
Just the smallest tug at the corner of Eames' lips.  
  
You caught me on a day-out-of-ordinary, Arthur wants to say.  
  
****  
  
It's 3 a.m., and Arthur is making spaghetti and meatballs in a t-shirt and boxers. His phone under his ear.  
  
"So your day was good," Arthur says to Dom.  
  
"Yes, Arthur."  
  
He smiles a quiet smile to himself. "I set the tone, with that 10 o'clock phone call. You're welcome."  
  
"Believe me when I say my day started hours before ten. James considers it a personal affront that the television doesn't just spring on at five in the morning."  
  
"Hm," Arthur says.  
  
"You seem distracted. This is why I hate talking on the phone."  
  
"How lucky, then," Arthur says, "that during the vast majority of the year, the only phone calls we exchange are about jobs."  
  
"I'm quitting soon," Dom says. “When I can.”  
  
"Expected."  
  
"Good." Dom sighs. Arthur wonders what he's doing. Painting his nails, maybe. Shaving his legs. Curling his eyelashes. "I thought you'd be angrier," Dom says, interrupting Arthur's postulations.  
  
"About?"  
  
"What I told you I did to Mal. My first experience with inception."  
  
Arthur dips his finger into the sauce. The hot hiss of steam. He brings it to his mouth, tastes it. "It was a relief, almost. To know she wouldn't have done what she did if she were in her right mind." It occurs to him, after the words are out of his mouth, that the sentiment won't be easy for Dom to hear.  
  
But all Dom says is, "Yes."  
  
Arthur turns off the heat. The stove burner a dull and fiery red. The bulb above is fading, a light that has dimmed that will never shine as bright. "So, today was more bearable this year, wasn’t it?"  
  
Dom lets out a long breath. "It was quieter, at least."  
  
Through the window, Arthur watches the fog growing back, like it has roots deep under the asphalt and ground of these streets. In the air, the dampened noise of sauce still-simmering, of Eames, breathing heavily on the couch, of sirens far away, their distant wail. “Yes,” Arthur says.  
  
There is a hush over this city.  
  
 **The end.**

 


End file.
